


The Part You Throw Away

by ialpiriel



Series: Shadows Get Long [8]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Apologies, Boundaries, Break Up, Established Relationship, F/F, Female Friendship, Female Mentors, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Names, Setting Boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 11:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10661964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ialpiriel/pseuds/ialpiriel
Summary: After escaping her crucifixion and joining her team in scattering to the four winds, Lucinda and Siri travel east, toward something Lucinda remembers, and Siri hopes for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a direct sequel to another in the same series. It immediately follows _[Say They Fear Her](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6056509/chapters/13884445)_ which in turn immediately follows _[God Used Me as a Hammer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5127509)_. Events from other fics in the series, primarily “[Lay Your Head Where My Heart Used To Be](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4872751)," are referenced throughout, and if you haven't read them (or if it's been a while) I'd strongly recommend (re)reading them.
> 
> This is your warning that there is some violence and gore in this fic, and references to prior violence and gore. There's also some irresponsible drug use. One of the main characters is Not A Nice Person. Read responsibly.

“Owl?” Little Bird asks, crawls into Owl’s lap, curls against her chest, pulls Owl’s coat over her. Shields herself from the fire, wraps herself in the body-warmth and cigarette-reek.

“Yes, Little Bird?” Owl asks, wraps her arms around her. She’s getting too big for this, her legs tangling as she tries to rest them on top of Owl’s thigh.

“What happens if someone has a lot of ghosts?”

“How did she get the ghosts?” Owl asks. There’s the shriek of someone else’s owl, in the trees around them, as Little Bird considers.

“The ghosts just started following her one day?” Little Bird suggests.

“She didn’t make them angry?”

“No. What if the ghosts are just...interested in her?”

“Hm,” Owl hums. “Then I suppose she ought to talk to the ghosts.”

“What if she’s scared of the ghosts?”

“Why would she be afraid of the ghosts?”

“Because they know things she doesn’t,” Little Bird replies. Leans her head hard into Owl’s chest.

“Not knowing everything is nothing to be afraid of,” Owl murmurs.

“But what if I need to know something, and I don’t, and the ghosts use it to hurt me?”

“A ghost can’t touch you.” Owl replies. “All they can use is words.”

‘Words can hurt,” Little Bird says, small and soft, voice muffled into her scarf.

“That they can,” Owl agrees. 

They're quiet for a long moment, and across camp Head Vulture laughs at something Adopted Magpie said.

“What happens if she made the ghosts angry?” Little Bird asks.

“Then she has to apologize.”

“How do you apologize to a ghost? You can’t give them things or fix things like you can for real people.”

“Then you raise a bird for a ghost.”

“But that’s--” Little Bird cuts herself off, scowls. Owl knows the sound of that silence.

“That’s how you apologize. You raise a messenger for the ghosts that are angry, and you treat the bird like you treat yours.”

“Oh,” Little Bird tugs Owl’s coat tighter. “Have you ever had to apologize to a ghost?”

“Once, when I was with a different tribe. I like the way this tribe apologizes better. Create, instead of destroy.” She rocks side to side, and Little Bird giggles.

***

“Siri?” she asks, hears Siri shift the book off her lap somewhere behind her. At the bottom of the ditch, a few inches of water trickle slowly by. It’s full of muck, and there’s no grass growing on the sides of the ditch.

“Yes?” Siri asks.

“Can you cut my hair?” Lucinda asks.

“You want a haircut?” Siri asks, and stands, feet crunching on the dirt as she comes to stand behind Lucinda, just off to her right.

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees.

“All I have are my bandage scissors,” Siri murmurs, and settles down next to Lucinda, folds her legs, rests her hands in her lap. She stares down at the water, and Lucinda glances over in time to see her scowl down at it.

“I have a knife and a straight razor,” Lucinda replies, pulls the knife out of its thigh sheath and flips it, holds it out to Siri handle first. Siri considers for a moment before taking the knife and balancing it across her knee.

“It’s getting a bit dark to use a straight razor,” Siri replies.

“We can use a straight razor in the morning.” Lucinda shrugs, swings one foot out, stares at the scuffs on the toe of her boot. Siri glances over at the movement, sighs softly.

“Why?” she asks, picks up the knife, rises to her knees. Lucinda swings her legs up over the edge, turns her back to Siri. She unties her braid as Siri settled behind her, combs her braid out until it falls loose over her shoulders. Siri pulls her fingertips through Lucinda’s hair, and Lucinda stays still. “Is this some sort of disguise?” She pauses just a moment. “I think the assassin squads will still recognize you.”

Lucinda laughs, ducks her head. She shakes her head, and Siri scoops up a handful of hair from the nape of her neck.

“i just...want to start over,” she murmurs. “I heard a lot of stories about women cutting their hair when they--changed. I thought I should try it.”

Siri snorts, but there's a smile underneath it. She holds the handful of hair tight, cuts it a bit above the scalp. Lucinda huffs out through her nose. Siri holds the handful of hair over Lucinda's shoulder, rests her her forearm just above Lucinda’s collarbone. Lucinda takes the handful of hair, twists it through her fingers. She lays it across her leg, pets it gently as Siri cuts another chunk, drops it on the ground.

“Maybe your raven would like it to line her nest,” Siri suggests.

“She might,” Lucinda agrees. She spreads the hair across her leg, down to a single layer, then whistles low through her teeth. A moment later, her raven hops over from her place by the fire and onto Lucinda’s knee, atop the hair. Lucinda tugs the hair out from under her as Siri takes off another handful--now at the back curve of her skull, what hair is left ragged and uneven. “Here,” Lucinda says, offers the hair. Her raven picks at it, then flutters off with a beakful. “She does,” Lucinda confirms.

“You spoil that bird.”

“I know,” Lucinda replies. “She’s important to me though.”

“I know,” Siri agrees, takes off two more chunks of hair--leaves only one, against Lucinda’s hairline, that needs cut still. “It’s…” She trails off, takes hold of the last chunk of Lucinda’s hair, cuts as close to the scalp as she can. “It’s sweet,” she finally says.

Lucinda snorts, but holds still as Siri cuts.

Siri runs her hand down Lucinda's almost-mohawk.

“It’ll need another run with the knife in the morning, and then generous application of your razor, but most of it is done.”

“Thank you,” Lucinda murmurs, runs her hand back over her ragged haircut. “So are you calling this time to camp for the night?”

“I am,” Siri agrees. “Time to eat and then sleep, and in the morning we can fix my hack job and we can get back on the road.” Siri holds out the knife as Lucinda sweeps hair off her lap and turns to face her. 

“How are your feet doing?” Lucinda asks.

“I haven’t been getting blisters for _months_ , Lucy, my feet are _fine_.” Siri raises her eyebrows, tips her chin down to give Lucinda a _look_. Lucinda grins and giggles. “How are you? Still holding up? Are you still drinking enough water? Eating enough?”

“It’s been a week and a half, Siri, and at least the Legion fed me. I’m _fine_ ” she says, mimics Siri’s tone, tips her chin down and raises her eyebrows to mimic her expression too. Siri laughs a little, turns away, grinning. “And I’ll _be_ fine as long as we keep today’s pace and keep finding water that’s not just…” She glances down at the ditch. “Muck.”

“Don't drink that.” Siri says. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’m pretty hard to make sick from bad water.” Lucinda shrugs, rises to her feet. She holds a hand down for Siri, and Siri takes it, hauls herself to her feet. “Courier, Legion, tribal, you get used to it after a while.”

“Please don’t ever tell that to someone who grew up with nice water, ever again.”

“Photo learned,” Lucinda replies, turns back toward their firepit and packs and sleeping bags, bumps her elbow into Siri’s as Siri turns too. “She learned very quickly.”

“And then the rest of us spent the next three days worried about getting diarrhea too. Don’t do it.”

Lucinda laughs, leans into Siri as they walk back toward their makeshift camp. They settle next to each other on Siri’s sleeping bag, knocking knees into each other as Lucinda tosses another chunk of cactus on the fire.

They’re both quiet, and Lucinda’s bird flutters around the nest in the hood of Lucinda’s coat--draped over her pack to keep the nest upright--weaving hair into the inner layer.

“Can I kiss you?” Siri asks, after a long quiet minute of watching the fire.

“Please,” Lucinda replies, turns to face Siri. Siri gently leans down and presses a tiny peck ot Lucinda’s lips before pulling back. Lucinda grins up at her, and Siri looks away, smile wide. She tucks her chin into her shoulder, and Lucinda laughs.

“Can I kiss you again?” Siri asks.

“Please,” Lucinda murmurs, and Siri lays a hand on her cheek, turns her head, kisses her deeper--still just a press of lips, chapped, dry, cracked from the wind and sand and dust and sun, but soft enough for this--and Siri presses back until Lucinda is digging her fingers into the front of Siri’s shirt, pulling away to giggle and bump her forehead to Siri’s. Siri grins too, cheeks darkening as her hand slides from Lucinda's cheek to the side of her neck. “Do you want to sleep together tonight?” Lucinda asks, turns her head just enough that her breath is warm against Siri’s wrist. “Not like--” She pulls a face, wrinkles her nose, squeezes one eye shut tighter than the other. “But just together. In our own sleeping bags, or maybe just under a blanket. Either way.”

“I’m sleeping behind you, tonight, now that I don’t have to worry about your hair,” Siri says. 

“That sounds great to me,” Lucinda replies, leans her head on Siri’s shoulder. Siri drops her hand from Lucinda's neck, turns back to the fire, and snakes one arm over Lucinda’s shoulders.

***

“Are those ravens?” Lucinda asks, points toward the birds circling on the horizon.

“I don’t know,” Siri replies. “They’re not vultures, at least, I know that much.”

“And they're not hawks, they’re shaped wrong,” Lucinda says. She chews on her bottom lip. Her raven croaks at her. “So they might be ravens.”

“And you need a raven,” Siri says.

“And I need a raven.”

“Is it even breeding season?” Siri asks.

“It has to be getting close,” Lucinda replies. “Isn’t it, huh?” she asks her bird, scratches her under the chin. The raven stays sitting on her shoulder, crouched like she’s about to take off, but not moving. “So I go find a nestling, and then we keep moving so they don’t catch up and peck out my eyes.”

“Is that a legitimate concern you have about this process?” Siri asks. “Should I be worried about _my_ eyes too?”

“Ravens are too smart for their own good, so.” Lucinda hefts her pack higher on her shoulders, cracks her neck. Her bird takes off with an upset squawk. “You won't want to be too close to me, until we're far enough away from them that they decide to cut their losses and go home.”

“Are you goig not be climbing anything stupidly high with a broken leg this time?”

“I shouldn’t, since I don’t have a broken leg anymore.”

“Mm,” Siri replies.

“I _will_ probably be climbing something, though, yeah.”

“Don’t do anything too stupid, okay?” Siri says, rolls her shoulders. “I’d really rather not have to make you an eyepatch.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lucinda agrees. “As careful as I can be.”

‘Where should I wait for you?” Siri asks. “I am not making enemies of a bunch of ravens.”

Lucinda studies the circling ravens, squints against the fading blue of the sky.

“We’re a mile or so away now, which is far enough away the birds won’t follow me back this far.”

“A mile is a long way to run away from a flock of pissed off birds,” Siri points out. “We can get closer, can’t we?”

“Maybe a quarter mile or so, but otherwise I worry that they’ll catch on that I stole a nestling and keep following me.”

“Why do you need another raven?” Siri asks, voice quiet. She tucks her chin into her chest, studies the cracked ground in front of them. “You said you needed one, but you didn’t give me a real reason why.” She pauses, waits. Lucinda kicks a chunk of rock out ahead of herself.

“I--” Lucinda starts, cuts herself off too. “I can explain once I have the bird and I have the time to talk while I feed it.”

“Alright,” Siri agrees. “Is this about as close as you wanted to get?”

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees, stops next to a joshua tree, slides her pack off her shoulders and sets it upright. “I’ll be back in an hour at most.”

“Are we going to move on after, or are we here for the night?” Siri asks, glances toward where the sun hangs high in the sky--barely past midday, another nine hours of sun before the day will finally cool.

“Let’s stay here for the night. That’ll be easier than trying to get a bird settled into a nest while on the road.”

“Alright. I’ll set things up while you’re gone.” Siri sets her own pack down, and Lucinda’s raven immediately hops over and stares up at her, waiting.

***

The ravens are circling around a watering hole, a radbuffalo breathing heavy but still unmoving, toppled on its side, not moving. There are vultures, too, some of the big vultures circling overhead, the smaller ones perched in trees, waiting.

There are a few sun-baked trees not inhabited by vultures, and they're scattered with nests--mostly empty, now, with food so close.

The birds notice her, set up a racket, and then proceed to ignore her as she makes no move toward them.

The radbuffalo is pointed toward the water, like it was trying to get to it, so hopefully the water is good. She steps ot the edge of the water, watches the birds and the buffalo from the corners of her eyes, and refills her canteen. The water smells fine, when she raises it to her nose to sniff, and she takes a tentative sip--it doesn’t taste clean, but it’s not bitter or chemical-tasting. She takes a deeper drink.

Three ravens settle on the buffalo’s head, and it huffs, but can’t muster the energy to shake them off.

Lucinda scans the trees again, settles on the one with the best chance--not many nests, but they’re all devoid of adult birds, and she sees the awkward shape of a nestling pop its lumpy head over the edge of the nest wall.

A couple of the ravens watch her, but none of them _keep_ watching, even as she approaches the tree, starts calculating the best way up.

She grabs the first branch, hauls herself up, and a bird sets up an alarm call. She tries to climb faster, hauls herself higher in the tree until the branches start to give under her too much, until there are ravens flapping down into the branches around her and the pecks at her hands get too vicious.

She leans as far as she can, scoops the closest nestling out, and clutches it to her chest as she tries to hop down branches.

The ravens follow even as she sprints away, nestling pecking at her hand, squawking at her.

The ravens stop following a half mile out, and she slows to a walk, then to a stop, and squats in the dirt.

The raven pecks her again, but she keeps it cupped close to her chest as she digs out a piece of jerky from her nearly-empty bag.

“Hi baby,” she murmurs, shoves the piece of jerky in her mouth. The raven pecks again. “You’re a very important bird, you know that?” she asks, mouth full. She spits out a bit of jerky into her free hand, then dangles it above the raven. The raven opens its mouth, and she drops the mostly-chewed jerky into its beak. The raven swallows.

Lucinda pets the top of the raven’s head, and the bird doesn’t peck.

“You're such an important bird, yes you are,” she murmurs, spits another piece of jerky into her hand. “You know what I did, and you know what you need to do too.”

***

“So, why the new raven?” Siri asks. Her bedroll is already rolled out, her book set to its side, her pack at its head, canteen in the middle where she left it. “You said you would explain later.”

“I--” Lucinda starts, swallows hard. “Before the Dam. Before the--the leg thing. Before I shot Mr. House. After I told you what I was, in the tribe.”

“The woman you bought and left with,” Siri says. She bites her top lip, stares into the fire. Her eyes are narrowed, her brow furrowed, gears turning before suddenly she stops. “I remember her. She told me that they had written her down as ‘Marita’ but that wasn’t her name.”

“She was another Raven,” Lucinda says, strokes her nestling’s head. Her full-grown raven sits on her shoulder, and watches its new companion. “She was three years older than me. She was two years old when her mother joined the tribe, so she was good as born to us.” Lucinda doesn’t look up from the nestling.

“And you killed her,” Siri says. She stops biting her lip, stares into the fire.

“And I killed her,” Lucinda agrees, voice soft.

Lucinda glances up. Siri is still staring into the fire.

“It was quick,” Lucinda says, looks back down to her nestiling. She hunches in on herself, rubs one ear against her shoulder. “It was-”

“Don’t,” Siri says, soft, low. “There is nothing you can say to me, right now, that will change what you did.”

“I know,” Lucinda says.

“Do you?” Siri asks. Her voice is sharp, still quiet, but unyielding. 

“I’m sorry,” Lucinda says.

“And what good does that do Marita?” Siri looks up, looks Lucinda in the eye. “Or should I call her Raven like she should have been called?” Siri snorts, turns away. 

Siri stands, gathers her things, moves her sleeping bag, out to the edge of the firelight, settles down with her back to Lucinda. She doesn’t turn around when she lays down to sleep.

Lucinda stays up, her new raven asleep in the nest, Old Raven burrowed under Lucinda’s fading decanus scarf. She falls asleep after the moon has set, a little more than halfway through the night, curls up with both the scarf and the nest tucked between her legs and arms as she sleeps on her side.


	2. Chapter 2

“Those are vultures. Big ones.” Lucinda squints up at the sky, shakes her sunglasses down her nose.

Siri grunts, squints up at them.

“I need one of those too,” Lucinda says.

“You already have the baby raven. Where are you going to keep the vulture?”

“I’ll make it a sling out of my scarf, probably,” Lucinda replies.

Siri grunts again, looks down from the sky, and goes back to watching the scrubland under her feet. 

“It’s still early enough I don’t think we need to make camp for the day, we can just keep moving.”

“That’s fine,” Siri says, rubs at her forehead. She takes a drink from her canteen a moment later, looks back up at the vultures. “What kind of vultures are those?” she asks.

Lucinda grins, looks over to her, pushes her sunglasses back up.

“Probably the big ones! It’s kinda far east to see them, but Head Vulture had one she took further east than here, and there was pretty good animal availability here, too. From where we are they’re a pretty long way away, and we can tell they’re vultures, so they have to be pretty big. And you can see the smaller ones, too,” Lucinda points to another vulture, circling lower than the others, “So you can see how big that one is.”

“Do you want the big one because of all the shit you’ve done?” Siri asks, presses her lips together.

Lucinda drops her arm, digs her hands into her pockets. Her brows furrow, for just a moment, and she opens her mouth, hesitates.

“I think they’re good birds. They’re smart. They care for their fledglings for a long time. They mate for life.” Lucinda sucks a loud breath. “And yeah. They’re big birds. Wide wings. Live for a long, long time. Will probably outlive me, if the Legion has anything to say about it. Seems like the sort of bird I would want for...this.”

Siri hums, and watches the vulture circle more.

***

The nestling is alone in its cave, and the parents are nowhere to be seen. The nestling hisses at her, flaps its ugly, downy wings at her, tries to snap.

Lucinda grabs one foot, pulls it toward herself until she can get her arms around it, wrap it in her thinnest, least-unwieldy blanket, and bundle it into the sling she made of her scarf. The bird wiggles, but she ignores it, starts back down the steep rock face.

Siri glances at her when she drags herself into camp, toting the now-quiet nestling, no longer squirming, now just sitting silently in its blanket.

“You’re going to have to feed it on your own,” Siri says, doesn’t look up from her book.

“I know,” Lucinda replies, a little breathless. She sets the bird down on the ground. Her old raven hops over, inspects the sling, and then starts trying to peel away the layers of cloth. The nestling-raven starts croaking, demanding food.

***

The vulture is quiet, at least, and rides in the sling without much trouble. Lucinda’s Old Raven flies ahead, or behind or perches on Lucinda’s shoulder, feeding the occasional cricket or locust or half-eaten field mouse ot the begging nestling, still riding in Lucinda’s hood. Siri keeps her eyes down, lets her lids drift near closed, just open enough she doesn't trip over barrel cacti and rocks.

Lucinda trips over a rock, flails for a moment, hops until she catches her footing again, and looks back at the offending rock.

An empty eye socket stares back, and Lucinda stares at it for a moment, before she turns, checks the position of the sun, scans for something on the horizon.

Siri stares at the chunk of skull. It’s cracked in at least three spots--the zygomatic bone is snapped and missing a chunk where it meets with the sphenoid, the sphenoid bone shattered beyond repair, the maxilla cracked across the nasal bone.

“This is where we go north,” Lucinda says, walks away from the skull, stops to see if Siri is following.

“You know these bones?” Siri asks. She glances at Lucinda, who shifts foot to foot, fidgets with the recently-widening tear in the hem of her sleeve, and watches Siri without looking away.

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees. “And I know it’s time to move north.”

“Are these yours?” Siri asks.

“I didn’t kill them,” Lucinda says. “I’ve done some shit, but I didn’t kill _them_.”

“Do you know who they are?” Siri asks.

“Why?” Lucinda asks, sighs.

“I’m just curious,” Siri replies. She reaches out for the skull, brushes away some dirt. More of the bone crumbles away. She picks up a small piece, studies it between her fingers.

“Let them rest, please,” Lucinda says.

“Who are they?” Siri asks again.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lucinda says, turns away from Siri. Siri stands, puts her hands in her pockets as she studies the skull.

“If you didn't kill them, who did?” she asks.

“Legion,” Lucinda says.

Siri turns away, follows toward Lucinda, stops a few steps behind her. Lucinda looks down at the ground.

“The first stop should be two weeks north-ish of here. I still remember the landmarks, I shouldn’t get lost.”

Lucinda starts walking, and Siri pauses for a moment, looks at the bones, before falling in behind.

***

Head Vulture rocks her jaw back and forth, stares the legionaries in the eyes. Henny clings to her arm, half-hidden behind her, eyes wide and hard, brows crinkled. New Magpie stands behind Henny, rag pressed to the bleeding wound on her head, though it’s soaked through and no longer stopping anything. Little Vulture and Baby Vulture stand close by, Baby with one hand on Henny’s sleeve, Little Vulture with her arms across her stomach, eyes toward Adopted Eagle. Adopted Eagle stands, fists clenched, jaw tight, committing every face to memory.

The Seagulls and the Eagles stand, clustered together, Old Seagull with Little Seagull held against her chest, Little Seagull trying to cry quietly, Little Eagle and Twin Seagull holding hands so tight their knuckles are white, Adopted Seagull standing behind them, her eyes wide and vacant. 

Owl-Eagle has the Fledgling wrapped in her coat, holds her close, blocks her eyes. Old Eagle stands close by, her hand on Owl-Eagle’s shoulder, trying to offer comfort. Little Raven stands close behind, eyes wide, watching the five women and the legionaries.

Old Magpie, Twin Owl, and Little Owl stand facing away, arms folded in front of themselves, the Owls crying, the Magpie not.

Adopted Magpie stands in the line with them, turned sideways, tries to look at Little Raven, who is watching her with wide eyes, taking in every detail of the line, the dozen legionaries with guns, the expression on her mother’s face, on Old Raven’s face, on the way the Owls’ shoulders shake and the Magpies’ don’t.

Old Raven stares the legionary with the gun right in the eye.

“Eagle, dear, stay safe. I love you. You.” She looks the legionary in the eye, eyes wide, brows furrowed, fury on her face. “You, I hope you rot in a hell of your own making,” she says, and Little Raven watches even though Owl-Eagle tries to step into her way, and the legionary raises his rifle, takes aim, and--

_Boom_ , lever down, case ejected, lever up.

Old Raven hits the ground, and her bird, circling above, starts croaking.

***

“We could catch you a bird,” Lucinda offers, runs her thumb under the strap of her backpack. “You could catch you a bird, I guess. I’m not supposed to help, really, except maybe getting you into the approximate area.”

“I think I’ll wait a while longer,” Siri replies, fiddles with the strap on her own backpack. “I’m still...deciding.”

“Alright,” Lucinda agrees. “There are a lot of owls around, so you have lots of choices.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Siri agrees.

***

“I think you've earned a new name,” Old Raven says, presses her lips together, squints at Owl.

Owl snorts.

“And what’s that, dear Raven?” she asks. Around the fire, the other women stop to listen. Little Raven, sitting behind Old Raven, her bird in her lap, listens most intently, eyes wide and curious.

“Eagle,” Old Raven says, considers owl for a moment, and then nods. “Eagles, what do you think?”

The Eagles lean forward, study Owl where she stands. Owl turns to face them, puts her hands on her hips.

“Grounds?” Head Eagle asks, does a harder chew on her chewing stick. Her eyes are narrowed, evaluating.

“She’s changed. Last two, three years, as we've seen more and more of the Legion, she’s started offering to defend, instead of looking for signs and magic.”

“Two years ain’t long,” Head Eagle says, tips her head to crack her neck. She looks at Old Raven with sleepy eyes.

“When you're as old as we are, it’s a damn lot of change,” Old Raven replies. “When you're thirteen you’re still settling but when you’re…” She trails off, looks at Owl. Owl shrugs, squints up at the newly-twinkling stars, counts out on her fingers.

“I’m at least in my forties,” Owl says.

“That’s a lot of development when you’re forty years old,” Old Raven finished.

“Mmmm.” Head Eagle trades her chewing stick for a cigarette. “Not gonna call Mockingbird?”

“I haven’t done any real forecasting or future-telling in months. I've helped name one member, but it was a name any of you could have seen coming. I've changed, I’m not a religious person anymore.” Owl shakes her head. “I want to fight.”

Head Eagle considers for long, long seconds, then plucks her chewing stick from between her lips, barks to the other Eagles, “Vote!”

She turns and the other two Eagles shuffle together, look between each other, Head Eagle, Owl, the other two Owls, Old Raven, other tribeswomen gathered around.

“I vote she’s in,” Little Eagle says, squints at Owl. 

“I vote she’s in too,” Adopted Eagle agrees a moment later.

“Owls?” Old Raven asks.

“I vote I’m out,” Owl says, raises one hand above her shoulder, smiles. A few chuckles go through the gathered women.

“I vote out, as long as you can still help teach,” Little Owl says.

“I vote the same,” Twin Owl agrees, bumps elbows with Twin Seagull.

“That’s five votes in favor of a move,” Old Raven says, looks to Head Eagle.

“I abstain,” Head Eagle says. “But welcome aboard.”

“You’ll keep your bird until the old girl dies,” Old Raven says, nods decisively. “And then you’ll get an eagle, probably.”

“Probably?” Owl asks.

“If it works out, you get an eagle, if not.” Old Raven shrugs. “Then I guess we see what bird you really are.”

“Is it time to break out the drinks?” Head Vulture calls from somewhere in the darkness. “Can we do a toast?”

“Let’s do a toast,” Owl agreed.

“Shit yeah,” Head Vulture cheers, emerges out of the dark holding two re-corked bottles of wine. She hoots loudly as Owl--now Eagle--takes one of them and yanks the cork out.

***

The adobe wall is still standing, though it’s cracked in a half-dozen places along its south wall. The watchtower on the roof looks ragged, sunbleached, one of its roof panels cockeyed and loose.

“Hello?” Lucinda calls, once they’re within shouting distance. Her first raven flies ahead, coasts in a circle around above the compound. Siri drifts in behind Lucinda, fidgets with the straps of her pack. The compound looks abandoned--not ransacked, not like all the little towns along the roads, the ones that didn’t lay down and roll over, but empty. Like whoever lived here packed up and left, or just stopped caring. “Hello?” Lucinda calls again. “Swallow? Are you still around?”

There’s still no answer.

“I think I’ll wait here,” Siri says, stops on the path. Lucinda glances back and nods, before reaching for her gun and checking the chamber.

“I don’t think Swallow is here anymore, so at worst all I should have to shoot are coyotes.”

“No deathclaws?” Siri asks.

“Door is too narrow, unless someone broke half the building,” Lucinda calls back over her shoulder. “They built it that way when they started getting them this far east.”

“That’s forward thinking,” Siri calls back, goes a few steps forward so she can see through the gate.

“We got a lot of smart girls,” Lucinda calls back. “Picked ‘em up all over.”

“You moved a lot, didn't you?” Siri asks.

“My tribe went to four way stations,” Lucinda calls back. She stands at the door around the side of the building and squints at it. “That’s before we got to our summer stop, where we would stay at through late summer, then we would come back. no one stayed there, though, so we aren't going that far north.”

Siri hums, too quiet for Lucinda to hear from so far away. Lucinda's older raven lands on the adobe wall, next to the door opening.

“Hello?” Lucinda calls again, and reaches for the doorknob. There's still no answer.

When she swings the door open, the inside of the building is dark, cut through with dusty sunbeams in the corners. The cot in the corner is unmade, like whoever slept in it last hadn't bothered to remake the bed. Cans on the shelves are unopened, a stack of books on the low table next to the sofa is undisturbed, and the rug, dining table, kitchen fixtures, and single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling all remain undisturbed. There's a net basket hanging from the ceiling, next to the stove, and underneath it are the rotted, shriveled remains of some indeterminate produce. There are no bloodstains or other signs of struggle on the floor or walls

“It’s safe,” Lucinda yells from inside the house. “There's no one here, hasn’t been for at least a year.”

Siri’s footsteps crunch on the ground as she approaches, stops in the doorway. 

“Swallow, right?” Siri asks, looks around the room. First aid kit nailed to the wall just inside the door, labeled glass bottles on a shelf past the table, table covered in well-worn stains.

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees, steps further into the house, stands at the foot of the bed. “Mean old cuss, a lot of the time, but I think she was just tired of having all of us around. Didn’t say much, when she wasn’t complaining at us.”

“How did these waystations work?” Siri asks, steps over toward the couch.

“The group that comes through, comes through, sets up somewhere inside the wall. We usually have tents, or it's nice enough out we don't need them.” Lucinda drags her fingers across the bedsheet. “We all visit, bring news back. The caretakers are the quiet ones who don't want to travel anymore. They raise vegetables and keep these places safe from deathclaws or coyotes or bandits.” SHe pulls her hand back from the bed, shrugs as she sticks her hands in her pockets. “They give us food, we bring them new caretakers. Usually if a caretaker dies, we take the news back to our central point, tell someone there. There's usually someone who's ready to stop traveling, or need a break from the rest of this old ladies. Then she takes over.” Lucinda studies the blankets and pillow.

“It sounds like a nice way to live,” Siri says, studies the stains on the table. Definitely old blood, though there was a valiant effort to clean it off. “I could do that, I think.”

“Old Woodpecker--” and Lucinda stops, corrects herself, “the caretaker the next stop, she said it always got lonely. She was pre-war, so she said she knew how to be lonely for a long time. She would give the kids sweets, she kept bees and would make stuff from the honey. I always liked her stop the best, when I was little.”

“I would too,” Siri laughs. “Were they pre-war bees, or cazador bees?”

“Pre-war,” Lucinda replies, pulls the blanket off the cot. She shakes it out--drops mouse droppings on the floor, exposes a dozen holes chewed in the banket. She wrinkles her nose before grabbing the loose corners and starting to fold. “She had a dozen beehives, and was near this huge field of flowers. Broc flowers, wildflowers, pre-war cultivated ones, fruit trees, vegetables, vines. It was really pretty. Me and Fledgling would go out and make little circles out of the flowers, wear them, pretend we were queens of the world.”

“Fledgling?” Siri asks. “Must have been young.”

“A few years younger than me. She was nine when the Legion took us.” Lucinda sets the now-folded blanket on the foot of the bed. “She’s probably married, has two or three kids. She was young enough they would have married her off to someone who might be kind to her. I hope she was, if anything like that happened.”

“Hope is all we can do now, I guess,” Siri agrees.

“Do you want to sleep inside tonight?” Lucinda asks, studies the cot. “The cots are reasonably comfortable. Not a real bed, but they're not bad.”

“I wouldn’t mind sleeping in a bed again,” Siri says, and wanders toward the cot. Lucinda steps back toward the door, circles over to stand in front of the couch. “It’s been so long since I had a pillow.”

“That one might be full of mice,” Lucinda replies, and carefully settles down onto the dust-coated couch. “I’d recommend checking first.”

“A few mice is no problem,” Siri replies. She drops her pack on the cot, and the cot creaks, but holds. The pillow makes no sound.

“How long do you want to stay here?” Lucinda asks.

Siri almost-laughs, and turns to sit on the cot. She rests her elbows on her knees, studies the kitchen table, straight across from her, then the adobe wall behind that.

“My first impulse is to say ‘forever,’ but I don’t think I could stay here forever. I’m not tired enough of people to only see them twice a year.” Siri straightens up, reaches for her canteen. “A couple days, maybe.”

“It should be maybe a week and a half to the next waystation. Maybe a little less, since we’re a little faster on our feet than fifteen old women and two children.”

“We don’t need to push too hard. Your leg is still recovering from last time we did that.”

“Sure, Doc,” Lucinda agrees. She swings her pack off her shoulder and sets it on the floor, sets her vulture sling--the vulture immediately hops out and begins to explore--and her coat on the floor too, before leaning back, turning, and putting her feet up on the arm of the couch. She folds her hands behind her head.

“I mean it,” Siri says. “If you push too hard now, it’ll slow us down more later. You know how these things work.”

“I do, I do,” Lucinda agrees, and pulls her hands from beneath her head, and waves them above her face. “You don't need to worry about me.”

They stay for two days, refill their canteens, and then continue on in near-silence, Lucinda humming when they first set out, but quickly stopping as the days stretch on.


	3. Chapter 3

The next waystation is empty, fallen into disrepair. The trees along the back wall are still tall, but the ground underneath them is piled with fallen branches. The path to the well is sprouting grass, the well itself overgrown.

Siri stays outside the wall as Lucinda approaches the house--this one adobe too, but cracked, peeling, falling apart in places. Lucinda readies her gun, and as she steps through the entryway, a flock of pigeons takes off from the roof. Lucinda stops in her tracks, readies her gun, and watches the building.

“Woodpecker?” she calls. “Are you here? It’s Raven.”

There's some soft noise, like feet on a floor, from inside the house, and Lucinda raises her gun to her shoulder, drops to one knee as she calls again.

“Woodpecker? Is that you?”

Someone lurches out of the door of the adobe--emaciated, clothes little more than rags, hair wispy, hands turned to claws.

The feral ghoul snarls and turns on Lucinda.

Lucinda fires.

 _Boom_ , lever down, case ejected, lever up.

The ghoul falls, and Lucinda stays frozen in place for a long minute as the ghoul twitches, once, twice, the blood pooling around her prone form.

“That was Woodpecker,” Lucinda says, voice flat.

“I’m sorry,” Siri says, unfreezes her feet, takes a few steps forward before faltering again. Lucinda lowers her gun.

“Me too,” Lucinda says. “It should be safe inside, if you want to go in. I--I’m going to do funeral rites.”

“Can I help?” Siri asks. She moves to stand next to Lucinda.

“If you had a bird and had some training, probably.” Lucinda swings her rifle over her shoulder. She straightens up. “But right now, not really.”

“Alright,” Siri agrees. “I’ll go see what the inside of the house looks like.”

Siri steps past Woodpecker’s corpse, ducks into the dark, crumbling adobe.

Lucinda stares at Woodpecker another minute longer, before she rolls her corpse over, onto its back, and lifts it by its armpits, drags it away from the adobe. The pigeons are roosting on the roof of the house again, cooing softly.

Lucinda drags the corpse out to the road, then across it, looks up toward the horizon instead of watching the growing trail of blood.

She turns her back on the house, once she’s out into the tall grass. Woodpecker doesn't look peaceful, really--she looks like feral ghoul, withered, irradiated, sick, hungry. Not angry, though, at least. Not hungry.

Lucinda pulls her knife from its sheath, squats next to Woodpecker. Her vulture, in the sling still, squawks. 

“Soon,” Lucinda replies. Already the turkey vultures circle overhead, ravens close behind. 

The cuts aren’t so necessary, with a gunshot wound here, or a knife wound with Ulysses. Any opening is easy enough for the birds to widen as necessary.

But this is tradition, and the knife cuts easily from the corpse’s diaphragm to the waistband of its ragged pants. She spreads the corpse's arms out, away from the body, breaks its jaw with a wrench of her arm, so it hangs open.

The first vulture lands ten feet away, cocks its head to look at Lucinda and the corpse.

Before Lucinda stands up, she unslings the sling and sets it on the ground, sets her vulture on the ground. the vulture hops out, inspects the corpse, inspects the other vulture--a turkey vulture, only a little bigger than the nestling vulture--and then tears into the corpse.

Lucinda stands, walks away, turns to watch as more vultures and ravens start to land.

She digs out her pack of cigarettes and her pack of matches, but hesitates before lighting a cigarette, sticks bth into her hip pocket. She clears her throat, puts her shoulders back, and closes her eyes. She starts to sing:

“ _Why should we start and fear to die?_  
_What timorous worms we mortals are!_  
_Death is the gate to endless joy,_  
_And yet we dread to enter there_.”

More of the vultures land, and she opens her eyes, watches them start posturing, watches a few of the other turkey vultures converge on the corpse. They jockey with each other, and she falters for half a moment before singing again.

“ _The pains, the groans, the dying strife,_  
_Fright our approaching souls away;_  
_And we shrink back again to life,  
_Fond of our prison and our clay_.”_

____

The birds are ignoring her now, no glances spared, and her vulture is in among them--then both her ravens come floating down out of the sky, followed by more, and they dart between the vultures without a single pause.

“ _Oh if your bird would come and meet,_  
_Your soul could stretch her wings in haste,_  
_Fly fearless through death’s iron gate,  
_Nor feel the terrors as she passed_.”_

____

__

There’s the sound of footsteps behind her, but Lucinda doesn’t turn. Siri stands next to her, to her left, head held high as she watched the vultures and the ravens.

“ _That I can make a dying bed_  
_Feel soft as downy pillows are;  
_While on our breast you lean your head,  
_And breathe your life out sweetly there_.”__

____

____

Her singing shudders to a stop, finally, and she and Siri stand silent.

“Is that a tribe song?” Siri asks.

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees. “It’s one of the funeral songs. It’s in the book.” After a moment, Lucinda shrugs off her pack, digs through it until she finds the book. She starts flipping, and finally lands on page 30. She holds it out to Siri, and Siri takes it. Lucinda points to the bottom half of the page--the whole thing is wrinkled and waterstained, but still mostly readable. “We changed some of the words.”

“Can I sing too?” Siri asks, squints down at the words, in between the water stains.

“Sure,” Lucinda agrees, looks back to the flock of vultures. She starts to hum the tune. Siri picks it up, follows along, and when Lucinda loops around to the start, and starts to sing again, she joins in.

***

“I still don’t know your face,” Woodpecker says, leans forward on her cane, studies Adopted Magpie. “I remember you bringing a daughter with you, just a couple months old, this is her?”

“Yes,” Adopted Magpie agrees, tugs the toddler forward by the hand. The toddler looks up at Woodpecker with wide, unafraid eyes.

“And how old are you?” Woodpecker asks.

“She’s two and a half, now, aren’t you?” Adopted Magpie asks, and squats down too. The toddler nods, serious, and keeps her eyes focused on Woodpecker.

“You like walking?” Woodpecker asks. She sits, now, smiles wide.

“Yes,” the toddler says.

“You’ll fit right in with everyone else,” Woodpecker says. “You like sweets too?”

The toddler stares.

“We haven’t had a lot of chances for sweets,” Adopted Magpie murmurs.

“Ooh, then have I got a surprise for you,” Woodpecker cackles, rubs her hands together. She slowly straightens up and turns back to her squat adobe house. “Follow me,” she calls back over her shoulder, and Adopted Magpie straightens up too, and leads her toddler toward the house.

Woodpecker disappears into the house, and comes back out holding a lumpy half-sized canvas sack. She squats down again, grinning, and then digs in the bag for a moment before pulling out a hard, bright yellow disc.

“Here,” she says, and holds i out to the toddler. “Eat this.”

The toddler clutches at Adopted Magpie’s leg, eyes wide, frown crumpling her face. 

“It's alright,” Adopted Magpie reassures her toddler, and pats her head. She gently extricates her leg and squats next to her. She takes the yellow disc from Woodpecker, and offers it to the toddler. The toddler hesitates a moment longer before taking the candy and putting it in her mouth.

“Good, right?” Woodpecker asks, grinning even wider as she watches wonder dawn on the toddler’s face. “Got more where that came from. For your mama, too, if she’s interested.” Woodpecker cocks her eyebrows at Adopted Magpie, who smiles back at her.

***

“You know what happened to my town,” Siri says. The vultures dispersed hours ago, and Lucinda had gone back out to gather Woodpecker’s bones back together for the insects. Lucinda stays on the couch, flipping through the hymnbook, and Siri stays on the bed, fiddling with the softly peeling corners of the cardboard cover of her textbook. “What happened to your tribe?”

“We started seeing Legion patrols on our paths, or at least hearing about them from the stationary tribes.” Lucinda flips to another page, furrows her brow as she studies the words and music. “So we sat down and talked about what to do with the blood men and their wartribe. I was thirteen, and just starting to learn what my job was, so I didn’t contribute much, but.” She shakes her head. “Opinion was split on whether we join them and go to ground with everything that made us a tribe, or if we go to ground somewhere else and try to wait them out, or if we start taking potshots.”

“And you chose to join?” Siri asks, and sets her textbook aside. 

“And we chose to join,” Lucinda agrees, and closes her book. She holds it to her chest for a moment, studies the rag rug covering most of the floor.

“Did you vote?” Siri asks. “All of you. As a tribe.”

“We did,” Lucinda agrees, and finally replaces her book in her bag. She doesn’t look at Siri, looks at the far wall, brows still furrowed.

“How did _you_ vote?” Siri asks. She snorts out a laugh after a moment. “I wouldn’t have let my thirteen year old self vote in something that important.”

“Fledgling didn't, since she was only nine,” Lucinda agrees. “But I had a bird name, so they let me.” She opens her mouth to speak, hesitates a long moment, and then in a flat voice, continues, “I don’t remember what I voted. It’s been a long time.”

Siri’s voice is soft and low.

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” she says, no anger left behind it, and they both let that hang in the air between them.

***

Old Raven sits on the edge of the cart, and opens the flask at her hip. The rest of the tribe gathers around the fire, circles wide and loose as Owl-Eagle tosses another chunk of joshua tree onto the fire.

“You all know what this meet is about,” she says, and passes the flask to Head Vulture who takes it and takes her own sip. She passes it along to Head Owl, who takes a sip, and then passes it along to Head Seagull, Head Magpie, and Head Owl. After it’s passed between them, it restarts its circuit among the rest of the women. It’s passed to Fledgling too, though she takes one sniff and passes it along. Little Raven takes a careful sip, last of all, and passes it back to Old Raven.

“They ain’t gonna go away if we keep our heads down and our feet planted,” Head Vulture says. She leans back on one leg and crosses her arms. “And they sure as hell ain’t gonna go away if we join ‘em. I say we fight them--hit and run, take them out a few at a time. They can only send so many people against us, and how long until our stomping grounds are haunted and no one wants to visit them, right?”

“Motion noted,” Old Raven agrees, and nods. “The rest of you?”

“Avoid them,” Head Owl creaks. “We have lived for almost two centuries, never bowed to a warlord. We can live a few decades in one place until this machine exhausts and destroys itself from the inside out.”

“I agree,” Head Seagull offers. “We have safe living, we can recall everyone, hunker down for a few years until the danger is past. We can make it. Most of us have seen worse than this tribe.”

“I’m with Vulture,” Head Eagle says. “Bring the fight to them, make them eat their own machetes. Make sure they know they’re unwelcome here.” She half-hugs Fledgling, who leans back into her. “If we join them, we lose everything, and if we keep our heads down and they take other tribes, and we could’ve helped, we’re at fault for not helping.”

Head Magpie looks between the others--Head Vulture, Head Owl, Head Seagull, Head Eagle--and sighs. “I vote join. We change to be what we need. We’ve always gotten by, taken a difficult path to survive. We don’t have the people to mount an assault,” she points to Vulture and Eagle, “and we don’t have the staying power to keep ourselves silent and stationary for what might be _decades_.” She points to Head Owl and Head Seagull. “We die by either of those options. Whether it’s fast or slow, we don’t make it out of them alive.”

“My vote is to join them,” Old Raven says. “Easier to be the tapeworm than to be the wasp. Let them feed us, and let us change them from the inside.”

“Yeah, until they start feeding you dewormer,” Head Vulture snorts. Old Raven shoots her a look. Head Vulture shrugs and pulls a face.

“Anyone else have anything to add?” Old Raven asks, and looks around the faces. 

“We don’t have to walk right up to their front doors and launch an assault from there,” Adopted Eagle offers. “We can hit and run them for a long, long time. We know this land better than they do.”

“I want to see my daughter grow up, and hunting them will bring them to our doorstep, and joining them will kill all of us.” Adopted Magpie shrugs, looks down at the ground, her voice cracking. “We hunker down and hope for the best, and if we don’t get it, at least we have somewhere to make a last stand.”

“Old Raven is right,” Twin Owl says. “We can change it better from the inside out, instead of shooting them and hoping we have enough bullets to last us.”

“We only need one bullet to end this one and for all,” Head Vulture snorts. “And we put it in the warlord-in-chief’s head.”

“If you don't get yourself killed on your way to see him,” Twin Seagull snaps. “If one of us can get close, it really will take just one bullet. If we start a long war, or a long wait, it’ll take a lot more than that.”

Head Vulture scowls, but she doesn’t say anything. Old Raven looks around at the gathered women, waits for anyone else to say anything, and then clears her throat when no one does.

“Then I would say that’s time to split for the vote. If you think we should join them, group with me, if you think we should fight them, go to Head Vulture, and if you think we should go to ground and wait them out, group up with Head Seagull.”

There’s some shuffling around the fire, and people begin to split--Head Vulture stands off to Old Raven’s left, arms crossed, watching everyone else move. Owl-Eagle, Little Vulture, Baby Vulture, and all three Eagles join her. Fledgling follows her mother over, holds onto her sleeve. 

Head Seagull stands across the fire, in front and ot the right of Old Raven. Head Owl shuffles over to her, as does Henny, who glances back at Head Vulture, who gives her a small shrug and flicks her hand to shoo her on. Adopted Magpie steps around Little Raven to join the other three.

The rest--Head Magpie, Adopted Seagull, the twins, New Magpie, Little Owl, Little Seagull, and Little Raven--all move to join with Old Raven.

“That’s the vote, then,” Head Vulture says, as the silence stretches longer. Her voice is low, and rough, and she looks around at the rest of the tribe. “That’s the vote.”

“We won't seek them out,” Old Raven says. “They’ll come to us. If this is it for you, I obviously won’t stop you from leaving on your own. It’s up to each of you to make your own decision.”

The groups disperse back out among their things, and Head Vulture leans against the cart, next to Old Raven.

“We won’t stay a tribe if we join them, and you know it, Mindy. You’re responsible for whatever comes next for us.”

“What is our tribe, Vulture?” Old Raven asks, sighs. Little Raven is still hovering somewhere behind her elbow, trying to look nonchalant as she picks splinters off the cart with a knife. “What are we but a bunch of women who ran from something else? What tribe do we lose?”

“Maybe you’ve never lost a tribe before, but I think I could do without losing my tribe again, and losing my wife and every genuine friendship I’ve made in the last thirty years on top of that,” Head Vulture snaps. “I’ll stay with you shits who want to join, even if it’s just to tell you ‘I told you so’ when things go tits up.”

“I appreciate it,” Old Raven says. “Little Raven, why don’t you go with Vulture for the rest of the night. This is something you should learn about.”

“Yes’m,” Little Raven agrees, and trots off after Head Vulture as she turns to leave.

***

“This doesn't look good,” Lucinda murmurs. The adobe wall is half-fallen, and the shack has been clawed apart.

“That's a yao guai or a deathclaw,” Siri agrees. “Are we dinner?”

“There aren't any real footprints around, so I think we’re safe,” Lucinda replies, but she swings her gun around and checks the chamber, approaches the collapsed building with her gun raised and her finger on the trigger.

“I think I’ll wait back here,” Siri says, and stops on the road. She digs her hands into her pockets and looks around, studies the horizon. It’s empty, still, though there are getting to be more and more trees as they go north. It’s still not “forested” but there are more trees than she can count at a glance now at least. Lucinda doesn’t bother to look back, just keeps moving forward.

“It’s empty,” Lucinda finally calls back. “Collapsing, wouldn’t sleep in it, but it’s empty.”

“Alright,” Siri agrees, and follows Lucinda up to the house. 

Lucinda’s gun is off her shoulder, and she’s kicking at the waterstained books and scraps of wood and thatching. Siri stops next to her, peers into the dark cave-in of the house.

“What do you think happened?” Siri asks, reaches out to crumble part of the adobe wall between her fingers.

“Deathclaw, probably. Maybe more than one.” Lucinda shrugs. “We didn’t have a lot of trouble with them when I was young, but they’d been moving east for decades already, and it was only a matter of time until they were dense enough here to cause a problem.” She sticks her hands in her pockets. “They’re still probably dense enough to cause a problem if we’re out here habitually.”

“We shouldn’t have a problem though?” Siri asks.

“Hopefully not.” Lucinda shrugs again, and kicks the wall. It dents under the steel toecap in her boot. “I can kill it as long as there’s only one, anyway.”

“I’d really rather not deal with that,” Siri sighs. “Too much could go wrong. I’ve had to Med-X too many people who thought they could fight a deathclaw on their own.”

Lucinda glances over at Siri, who’s staring down at the adobe wall. 

“Aww, you really do care,” Lucinda teases, ducks her chin to hide her smile in her scarf.

Siri hesitates for a moment, doesn’t look at Lucinda, though a smile curls across her face.

“Only about our Med-X supply,” she says, and it turns into a laugh at the end. Lucinda laughs too. “Do you think the well still has water?” she asks, when they stop laughing. 

“Probably.” Lucinda cuts across the overgrown yard, toward the well pump. “It’s not like deathclaws have any reason to break it.”

“It could easily have a cracked pipe, or have rusted solid,” Siri argues, follows Lucinda over. She finds her canteen, unscrews the top, takes a drink. “Deathclaws aren’t the only agents of destruction out here, after all.”

“All the construction materials would have been a hundred years old when they put the well together.” Lucinda sets her gun on the ground, barrel pointed away from them, and then her pack next to it. “There’s no reason for the last decade and a half to have rusted it beyond use if the two hundred years before that didn’t manage.” She grabs ahold of the pump’s handle and hauls back and up, and after a moment of straining, the rust cracks and with a groan and creak, it lifts. She pumps down, then back up, and the first trickle of water out of the pump is yellow-brown. She keeps pumping, throws her weight into the slow pump, until the water is running free and clear.

Siri waits to refill her canteen, then the gallon jug from her pack, until Lucinda nods.

When Lucinda has refilled her own jug and canteen, and stopped pumping--the pump still drips, though not vigorously--they stand next to each other, looking at the pump, the ruined house, the yard of now-weed plants.

“Who was here, before everything?” Siri asks.

“She was a Sparrow. Old. Didn’t mind people, but didn’t really like them either. Never seemed like she was quite all _here_. Was a fine host.” Lucinda takes a drink from her canteen. “She had a wife who was still mobile, but she was on a different route. I don’t know why they split up, but I know they still cared about each other. They wrote letters to each other and had us deliver them every year.”

“Should we do a funeral for her?” Siri asks. “Since you're sure it’s a deathclaw, and we all know what happens with a deathclaw.”

Lucinda considers for a moment.

“Sure,” she agrees. “Let’s have a funeral.”

“Is it different for someone whose body you don’t have?” Siri asks.

“Probably, but I’ve never done one, so I guess we’re just gonna make it up right here,” Lucinda says, and kneels to dig through her pack for her book. Siri snorts softly, but takes the book when Lucinda offers it.


	4. Chapter 4

The walk to the next waystation is long, dusty, quiet. There are more trees, though they’re still clustered in low areas, but even those give way to flat, treeless prairie again, and a few hours later, a building appears on a rise. Lucinda’s pace quickens as they approach.

There’s a whitewashed picket fence around the front cinderblock wall, the words KEEP OUT painted in red on one side of the gate, and the tattoo-raven and another bird painted on the other side.

Lucinda unslings her gun from her shoulder, holds it out to Siri.

“I’m gonna go up and see if she’s around.”

“So why are you getting rid of the gun?” Siri asks, doesn’t take it.

“Because it’s been fourteen years and I’m worried about showing up on her doorstep armed.”

“What if she’s feral too?” Siri asks.

“That paint looks too new. Everything looks clean and kept-up.”

“And I’ve seen people turn from human to feral in two days, I don’t think a couple weeks is too far a stretch.” Siri still hasn’t taken the gun, her palm flat and open even as Lucinda tries to push the gun into her hand.

There’s a loud, high-pitched whistle, and the gate grinds aside. Lucinda spins to look, gun clutched close but not raised. Siri watches, eyes wide, as the gate rolls aside, creaking and rattling the whole time, and a figure is revealed--short, slight, narrow shouldered, wearing a ragged cowboy hat. Her skin is peeling and blistered--a long-time ghoul, by the looks of it--and she’s scowling, a sawed-off shotgun held in one hand, the other clutching the gate.

“Who the hell are you two?” she demands, stands solid in the gateway, feet set shoulder-width apart, scowl not letting up.

“I’m Siri. I’m a doctor,” Siri replies, automatically. 

“Good to have those around, in this day and age.” The ghoul nods. “And who the hell are you, three-birds?”

“Born Raven, to an adopted Magpie, on the west route,” Lucinda says, straightens herself out. She twists her gun, points it down at the ground, hand relaxing.

“Mmm,” the ghoul replies, drops her scowl, narrows her eyes. She sizes up Lucinda, then sizes up the birds--one raven circling above her, the other perched on her shoulder and watching the proceedings, and her vulture silent but bulky in the sling. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven, I think,” Lucinda says. “Or pretty close, at least.”

“Ah, that Raven. The little one.” She truly lowers the shotgun, now, reaches behind her to deposit it in a holster on the back of her belt. “Grew up a lot since I saw you last.”

“It’s-- it’s been a while since I saw someone else from the tribe,” Lucinda says.

“You’re not tribe?” the ghoul asks Siri. Siri shakes her head.

“I’m learning still. I think I could be, once I knew a little bit more.”

“Yeah?” the ghoul asks, face finally breaking into a grin. “And what’d Raven here tell you that you were?”

“She said I was an Owl.” Siri shuffles a little, fiddles with the strap of her backpack, then unscrews the top of her canteen.

“Could be,” the ghouls says, calmly. “Don't know you well enough to say, myself. I’m Poorwill, myself.” She purses her lips and makes a four-note whistle. “Why don’t you two come on in. Raven, you gotta tell me what the fuck happened. Ain’t heard from anyone in years, after the vote I heard your clan had. Never had any of the further west clans come through here.” Poorwill turns her back on Siri and Lucinda, starts walking toward the now-visible cinderblock house. Lucinda follows next, and Siri behind her. “Close the gate, please,” Poorwill calls over her shoulder. “Raven, you help, don’t leave your newbie to do the work on her own.”

Lucinda sighs dramatically and laughs as Poorwill does, and turns to help Siri haul the gate closed again--it has no lock, just a trio of latches they clip closed.

“Are you going to tell her? “Siri asks, after Poorwill disappears into the house, humming something loudly.

“Tell her what?” Lucinda asks, and she can’t look Siri in the eye.

“About your name, about the other waystations. About Owl-Eagle. About anything that she doesn’t know and maybe even got wrong.”

“I’ll tell her about the waystations,” Lucinda says. “And Owl-Eagle and what happened after our vote, I’ll tell her that.”

“But not about your name?”

“I--” Lucinda starts, and chokes her own words. She presses her lips together, studies the ground intently. “I should tell her.”

“Yes, you should,” Siri agrees. She starts toward the door. “Will you?”

Lucinda takes a deep breath, puts her shoulders back, and follows after Siri.

“I will,” she says. “When it feels appropriate.”

“Lucy,” Siri says, voice low, like something right after a sigh. 

“I will tell her,” Lucinda insists. “I will.”

“Please,” Siri says, and pushes the door open to follow Poorwill into the house. She steps aside so Lucinda can get in the door, into the front room with its two couches and quaint coffee table made of a beaten-flat car hood and more cinder blocks. The couches look comfortable, at least.

Poorwill is in the attached kitchen, measuring water out of a water butt into a percolator coffeepot, then measuring out coyote tobacco and clumpy dust from a battered steel can into the basket.

Siri sets her things down on the couch facing toward the front door, brushes her hands down her front to unwrinkle her already-too-far-gone shirt.

Lucinda closes the door, but stays standing next to it. She looks at Siri, who isn’t paying her any attention, and then at Poorwill, who is also not paying her any attention, though she’s still humming loudly. She looks back to Siri, who looks her in the eye, but says nothing.

“Ah, Poorwill,” she says, after what feels like hours stretching between her last glance at Siri and opening her mouth to speak. “My name isn’t Raven.”

“It’s not?” Poorwill asks, and turns to look at her, brows furrowed. She studies Lucinda’s face, eyes narrowed as she tries to figure out Lucinda’s name.

“No, it’s--” Lucinda chokes again, voice catching in her throat.

Poorwill squints harder, then looks at Lucinda’s ravens--one on Lucinda’s shoulder still, the other casually perched on the arm of the couch--and then at her vulture--still quiet and lumpy. After a moment, her eyes go hard, and her hands drift down from where she’s filling the percolator.

“Shrike,” Poorwill says. “You’re a Shrike.” She sets the percolator down, fury clear in her movements, in the set of her shoulders, in her deepening scowl, in the way she takes three restrained steps toward Lucinda before stopping just inside the living room. “And you--two ravens. Born a Raven, and if I’m reading the right story from your birds, you killed a Raven.”

Lucinda keeps her mouth shut, looks past Poorwill, out the kitchen window, at the cinderblock wall. She nods.

“And what did you think you would find here, Ravenkiller? How many of us do you think there are left?” She takes another step forward. “And how many of us do you think are going to follow a Shrike, a Ravenkiller, a woman bound to carry a vulture for all the people she’s killed?”

“I’m not asking you to follow me,” Lucinda replies, small. “Owl-Eagle sent me on this route as penance. She wanted me to see the tribe again.”

“Well, here I am,” Poorwill snaps. “And how were the others? How did they feel about this whole thing?”

“Two were gone, and Woodpecker was feral.” Lucinda folds her hands behind her back, closes her eyes, ducks her head. “We gave her a funeral.”

“Good.” Poorwill looks away, glances out her front window. “Good.”

Siri sits down, shoulders hunched, and drags her bag to the floor so she can determinedly dig through it for nothing in particular.

“Which Raven?” Poorwill finally asks, as Siri’s shuffling fills the silence.

“The one just a few years older than me. She was a legion slave. She didn’t---she didn’t know. It was fast.”

“Doesn't change what you did, but that’s a small kindness at least. What about the rest of them?”

“Absorbed by the Legion or killed. Not many of us left, now.”

“And your Old Raven?”

Lucinda shakes her head.

“Killed by the Legion. I assume all of the adult Ravens were. A lot of us were.”

“Magpie too?” Poorwill asks.

“Yeah.” Lucinda nods, small and soft. “She was fourth in the line. Old Raven was first.”

“You watched.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“I did. Someone had to.”

Poorwill snorts, but almost smiles. “AIn’t no reason to watch your own mother get shot, Ra-” Poorwill catches herself, makes a sour face, but doesn’t continue into a name.

“I know that now,” Lucinda says, and shrugs. She and Poorwill still don’t look at each other. The silence stretches between them again, long, longer, longer, until Siri breaks it.

“Can we stay the night here?” she asks.

“‘Course,” Poorwill agrees. “I only got one bed, and pardon me but I’m two and a half centuries old, so I call dibs.”

Lucinda laughs, but something in the air is still strained.

“You two settle in. I'll get coffee going.”

“Aside from my--name,” Lucinda finally manages. Siri glances up at her, shoulder still, breath caught in her chest. “I do have news from the trail up, and Owl-Eagle. About what happened after we disappeared.”

“We can talk over dinner. You put your birds outside, I don’t like birdshit in the house, and then you two fight over who gets the better couch.” Poorwill turns around and marches back into the kitchen, finishes filling the percolator and the basket, and sets it on a woodstove around a corner from the doorway, disappearing from view.

Lucinda whistles, and her raven takes off from the arm of the couch and lands on her shoulder. She takes all of her birds outside, and Siri can see her arranging them out the front window--sling nest hung from an outcropping in the wall, the two ravens dispersing to comfortable perches nearby. Lucinda leans back on her heels, hands on her hips, and watches.

“Siri?” Poorwill says, doesn't emerge from the kitchen. 

“Yes?” Siri asks, leans forward to try to see around the wall. The stove is too deepset, and Poorwill is still hidden.

“Does she treat you alright?” Poorwill takes a step back, then, leans so she can look Siri in the eye. “I’ve been part of this tribe since it was two dozen women hiding from the war in the shelter basement, so if you don't feel safe, you're the priority.”

“We’ve had disagreements about many things, and I’m certain we’ll have more in the next few months, but.” Siri glances back out the window. Lucinda is still standing near her birds, laughing now. “I would trust her to do her best to keep me safe.”

“If that's enough for you, that’s enough for me.” Poorwill shrugs, voice even. “See everything in this tribe. Don’t think I'd feel the same, in your boots, but I ain’t you, so.” Poorwill disappears back behind the wall. “You two been eating alright? Don’t trust those Legion fucks to feed you, sure, but you don’t look like you’ve been Legion for…” she trails off, leans back around the wall, squints at Siri. Siri turns her head and opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, then thinks better of it. “Few months, at least.”

“We ran two months ago,” Siri offers. “We had a long leash for a while before that though.”

“Am I gonna wanna hear about why?” Poorwill asks. There’s a scrape of metal on metal, followed by clatter of pans, as she leans back to what she was doing.

“No,” Siri says.

“Glad to know it before I asked,” Poorwill says, and follows it with a laugh. “When’s the last time you ate a vegetable?”

“We ate some banana yucca fruits a few days ago.”

“Jalapeños? Xander root? Pinto beans? Broc flowers? Carrots? Potatoes? You don't have scurvy yet?” Poorwill’s voice rises and falls, and Siri finally rises from the couch to join her in the kitchen, laughing. 

“I’ve been trying to gather what plants I can along the way, so we don't get scurvy, but you can only do so much.” She leans in the doorway. Poorwill has the percolator on a back burner, and a pot on a front burner. “We could always use more fruit and vegetables.”

“Well I-” Poorwill scoops up a sack from the floor, opens it to reveal a pile of carrots, “-have got you covered.” She dumps a handful of carrots out onto the counter. “How are you with a knife?”

“I’m certainly passable,” Siri says, and reaches for the knifeblock. “I’m a doctor first, but when there weren't dying legionaries to stitch up, I was pressed into cooking duty.”

“You good at cooking anything in particular?” Poorwill sets a few potatoes down next to Siri, and grabs her own knife to start chopping. 

“I learned from my mother and grandmother, but it wasn't something I was ever very interested in.” She finishes chopping the first carrot, slides it away and grabs another. “And it’s not like the Legion gave me a wealth of ingredients and free practice space to learn any more.”

“I’ve had two and a half centuries to get good at it, if you wanna learn.” Poorwill finishes chopping her potato and pushes it into a pile with Siri’s carrot. “Could always use an extra pair of hands around here.” 

“I don’t know if I could stand being out here with so few people,” Siri admits. “Even on the trip up here, I felt so exposed.”

“Well, they could use more hands back at Matamoros too, I’m sure. Were all a bunch of old geezers by now, could use some new blood in the tribe. Especially a doctor. That something the Legion trained you to do?”

“Oh, no.” Siri finishes her second carrot, grabs a third. “I was apprenticed to another doctor before the Legion burned my town. They took us both, because we could do some medicine, but we were split up and I think they--I think they killed her not too long after we were taken.” Her chopping falters, and Poorwill bumps their shoulders together, but says nothing. “I’ve been relying on tribal women for most of my learning since then.”

“Can’t be nearly as good as what you had before, as a real doctor.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Siri argues. She picks up chopping again. “Certainly most of the remedies are slower or wholly ineffective, but the ones that _do_ work, do work. I managed to requisition grain alcohol for disinfectant, which worked well enough, and between poultices and powder made of broc flowers and xander root, there are fewer preventable deaths.” She slices into the carrot viciously, then, eyebrows drawn down, scowling. “I still can’t do much for a missing leg, or a disembowelment, or throwing someone to the dogs for sport.”

“Couldn’t do much for that sort of shit before the big ol’ sunset in the east, either, so you ain’t far behind.” Poorwill bumps their shoulders together again, and Siri releases some of her tension. “Good bit better than whatever we’ve been cobbling together and guessing at for decades now, no matter what.”

“I fixed Lucy’s leg, that must have been--more than a year ago, now. A year and a half?”

“Lucy. That’s-?” Poorwill jerks her thumb back toward the living room, where Lucinda still isn’t.

“Oh! Yes. A variation on the name the Legion gave her. It’s what I’ve called her as long as I’ve known her.” Siri ducks her head, laughs a little. “Sorry.”

“Most of us have other names besides the bird names, so it’s nothing really. Just wanted to make sure I kept you all straight.” Poorwill starts in on another potato. “Please, continue.”

“She stepped in a bear trap, couldn’t get real medical attention for something like a week. She had a major infection, gangrene, necrosis, a complete transversal fracture and impacted fracture, I’m surprised she managed to walk at all, let alone as well as she can now.” Siri’s shoulders are loose again, chopping easy.

“Sounds nasty,” Poorwill says, and coughs politely.

“It was. It’s one of the worst leg injuries I’ve ever seen someone recover from, and certainly one of the best recoveries too. She mentioned some robots, I think, in a pre-war…” Siri trails off, screws her face up as she tries to remember. “Pre-war something. They were pre-war. They did some more fixing, on her leg. It was a good job of it, too. Better than I would expect from robots.” She goes back to her chopping. “She still has trouble sometimes, but I try to keep on her about being responsible and giving her leg a rest more often.”

“And how does that work?” Poorwill asks.

“Not well.” Siri sighs and pushes her third carrot into the pile.

“Sounds like her clan. Can’t ever get them to sit down and just _listen_. You get some in every generation but that bunch always seemed to be the worst.”

“Maybe it’s genetic,” Siri suggests. 

“More likely they all just knew they could get away with that sort of bull-headedness there in a way no one else was going to put up with.” Poorwill sighs. “Better they all take it out on each other than on the rest of us, right?”

“I suppose,” Siri agrees, and laughs a little to herself.

The front door creaks open, and Lucinda clomps into the living room.

“I think Siri's claimed her sofa, so you’re on the other,” Poorwill calls back over her shoulder. “We’re making dinner, if you have anything to contribute.”

“I have some coyote jerky I dried a week and a half ago. That’s about all I have that’s worth even thinking about contributing.”

“Do you have any of those pork and beans left?” Siri asks.

“No, we ate the last of those yesterday.” Lucinda finally drops her backpack onto the other couch and flips it open, starts digging. She comes out with a lumpy canvas roll that she immediately brings to the kitchen. “Fresh, delicious, jerkified coyote, for your enjoyment.”

“Not sure it’s fresh if it’s turned into jerky,” Poorwill replies, ticks one corner of her mouth up. “Put as much as you're willing to share in the pot. We’re having stew, made out of whatever I’ve got around. We can talk over dinner, and then after, I’ve still got a big chunk of honeycomb from Woodpecker. We can call this a special occasion, right?”

“Even with me being who I am?” Lucinda asks, dry, as she unrolls the canvas and starts breaking a handful of coyote jerky into the pot.

“You’re doing penance, right? Prodigal daughter, come back and bringing someone else to safety with her.” Poorwill shrugs. “If you're doing what you're supposed to be, and it looks like you are, then it's still gotta be _some_ sort of event. Work with me here, kid.”

Lucinda rolls her eyes.

“Don’t call me ‘kid,’ I’m damn near thirty years old.”

“And what year is it now? 2283? I’m two hundred and thirty-nine, you’re a kid as far as I’m concerned.”

“I am _not_ ,” Lucinda insists, turns to Poorwill with her hands on her hips. Siri glances over, out of the corner of her eye, grinning.

“Yes you are,” she says, quietly.

“See, she gets it,” Poorwill shoots back at Lucinda, gesturing to Siri with her knife. 

“I don’t know why I put up with you two,” Lucinda sighs, and turns back to her jerky.

“Because I’m your favorite aunt,” Poorwill offers.

“No, that was Head Vulture, try again.” Lucinda tosses in another handful of coyote jerky.

“Favorite _stationary_ aunt?”

“That was Woodpecker. You really gotta work harder than that.”

“Well, damn.” Poorwill sighs. “Can’t catch a break I guess.” She pauses, surveys the pile of vegetables in front of her and Siri. “I think that’s enough carrots and potatoes, why don’t we move this to the living room and you can catch me up on your trip here.”

“Sure,” Lucinda agrees, rewraps her jerky, and carries it back out to the kitchen, soon followed by Siri, and they both sit on their respective couches, don’t look at each other as they wait for Poorwill to follow.


	5. Chapter 5

“So Owl-Eagle is still alive, as far as you know.” Poorwill sips her coffee, studies Lucinda.

“She was when we left, and I don’t think they’d have any reason to have her executed now.”

“And the fledgling, younger than you?”

“Probably assimilated and married off. She was young enough to be retrained, if I was.” Lucinda sips her own coffee, fiddles with the cardboard cigarette pack on her knee.

“Old Raven is dead, so is your Magpie. The Vulture pair?”

“I don’t know. Owl-Eagle suggested that Head Vulture had escaped the Legion, but I don’t know about Henny. EIther she’s died, or she’s still somewhere under their control.” Lucinda shrugs, opens the pack of cigarettes, fiddles with one. “Can I smoke here?”

“Sit in the doorway if you’re going to. I don’t need my furniture smelling like smoke.”

Lucinda is immediately off the sofa, and she swings the door open, settles on the floor, her back against the jamb, as she digs out her matches and lights a cigarette.

“You know that shit’ll kill you, right?” Poorwill asks.

“I’ve been after her about it for months, the best she’s managed has been fewer per day.” Siri has her textbook open on her lap, is skimming down pages she’s read already, trying to act engrossed as Poorwill and Lucinda talked.

“Sorry,” Lucinda finally says when she exhales. Her older raven comes hopping up to her, pecks at her hand until Lucinda digs something out of her pockets for the bird to play with--this time, it’s a ring of keys. “Picked it up young.”

“Owl-Eagle?” Poorwill asks, sits back and crosses her knees.

“Her, and then a few of the women in Dog Town, too. We weren’t supposed to smoke, but we did anyway.”

Poorwill clicks her tongue, shakes her head. 

“You fell in with a lot of bad influences, kid. Oughta clean your act up.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Lucinda agrees, and takes another drag on her cigarette, one eyebrow cocked.

“Don’t get smart with me, you.” Poorwill crosses one arm across her chest, points at Lucinda with the other. “You’re eating my food and sleeping in my living room.”

“I contributed fair and square to that stew and you know it.” Lucinda replies. She stretches oher left leg out, massages her shin with the heel of her hand. Her bird hops up onto her thigh once her arm is out of the way.

“Fine, fine.” Poorwill waves her arm, then drops it across her chest with the other. “Look, this is more excitement than I’ve had in the last eight years, and I’m fuckin’ wiped. How are you two doing?”

“I could sleep,” Siri murmurs. “I’m not exhausted, which is a nice break.”

“I’m gonna smoke at least one more cigarette, but I could use the sleep too.”

“Then I think that’s it for the night, kiddos. We can talk about what we do with all these deaths and your penance in the morning, but for now, we sleep.” Poorwill hauls herself up off the couch, waggles her fingers in some sort of wave as she disappears into the back room on the house. She closes a flimsy-looking wooden door behind herself. There’s a shuffle of clothes, a creak of bedsprings, and then silence.

“Do you really need another cigarette?” Siri asks.

“I smoked one when she told me to take my birds out, and I smoked one for breakfast, and I smoked one between there. I’ve had cravings for the last three hours.”

“Alright then.” Siri closes her book on her bookmark, smiles a little to herself. “I think I’m going to try to sleep. I’m not exhausted, but I am tired.” A yawn punctuates her sentence. “And who knows what sort of schedule Poorwill keeps.”

“Might be one of those awful people who gets up before dawn, you’re right.” Lucinda shifts her position, and her raven hops down onto the dirt path again. “I’ll still be up for a bit, but I’ll try to be quiet.”

Siri nods, and then turns to putting her things where they're supposed to be--her textbook in her bag, shaking out her blanket and draping it across the other half of the couch until she can slide under it, pillow her head on her arm.

“Is your whole tribe like this?” Siri asks, low and soft. Lucinda checks Poorwill’s bedroom door--still closed, still silent, and then scoots across the floor until she’s leaning against the sofa, in front of Siri’s chest, still smoking.

“Some of them are, yeah,” Lucinda agree, also low and soft. “They’re people, just like any other tribe. Don’t know who’s still alive, but most of the ones at Matamoros are too old to be like this.” She snorts softly. “Ghouls are the only ones still this lively.”

“Are there a lot of ghouls?”

“Only a handful, last I was around.”

“Oh, good.” Siri shifts on the couch. “Poorwill is lovely, and very fun to talk to, but I think she wore me out more than an entire day of walking did.”

Lucinda ducks her head, laughs a little.

“Yeah, she’s like that. There are plenty of places to disappear, most of the time. If we were here with a whole clan you’re off the hook for a lot of this talking.” Lucinda takes another drag on her cigarette. Siri shifts again, reaches out to touch Lucinda’s hair--just long enough now for a loose curl to make itself known, and a multitude of cowlicks to form--but stops before she does. She rests her hand on the couch cushion just behind Lucinda’s head. “It’ll be the same at Matamoros. There’ll be a big rush to meet you, and once everyone is used to you they’ll leave you alone unless they need something from you.”

“And how long will it take for them to be used to me?”

Lucinda tips her head back, turns just enough to see Siri’s face. She grins.

“Might be a month, might be more, might be less. Poorwill gets lonely so she’ll talk your ear off any day of the week, but not everyone is like that.”

“Hey you two, quiet down out there. Some of us are trying to get our beauty sleep,” Poorwill calls through the still-closed door.

“You missed that boat about two centuries ago, sorry,” Lucinda calls back.

Poorwill makes a loud but unspecific sound of disgruntlement. She finishes it with “You're still in my living room.”

“We’ll try to be quiet,” Siri reassures her. She taps the back of Lucinda’s head. “Finish your cigarettes and go to sleep. I’m going to.”

“I will,” Lucinda agrees, and scoots back toward the doorframe.

“G’night,” Siri murmurs, and rolls over to face the back of the couch, blanket tugged up around her shoulders, warm and cozy.

***

Siri is the last one awake--Lucinda sits outside, three birds sitting on her legs as she smokes; Poorwill is in the kitchen, brewing more coffee, and the smell of cooking corn and reheating stew fill the house--and she comes to slowly, savoring the smell of food, Lucinda’s distant bird-directed babytalk, Poorwill’s humming of a song that seems almost-familiar.

It’s nice--early-morning warm, still, but the air is fresh and the food smells good and there’s no threat of violence, or blood, or loud noises. No one woke her before she woke on her own, and no one is talking like they’re planning on it. The food smells good, and Poorwill can carry a tune, and her blanket and bed on the couch are comfortable.

It’s hard to get up, to force herself out of the near-domestic near-bliss, out of the memories of sleeping on Anja’s couch, Anja’s big guard dog close by, snoring, Anja herself leaning over her books by the light of the pre-war emergency candles, hard to force herself to get up to her no-longer-aching feet and rub her still-sore eyes and roll her distantly-aching shoulders and hope that today the faint twitch along her spine remains nothing more than a twitch.

Lucinda doesn’t notice she’s up--she’s facing away from the door and involved with her birds--and Poorwill doesn’t either--also facing away from the living room, doing a little shuffling dance as she stirs the two pots and continues to hum.

“Hey, Lucy,” Poorwill calls out to Lucinda, and Lucinda grunts loudly back. “What’s your plan for where to go from here?”

“Back to Matamoros,” Lucinda says, and shuffles back. Her birds take it as their cue to hop off her legs. She rolls onto her knees, and nods at Siri when she sees her awake. “I came to see you like I was supposed to, and since you’re the last stop before summer grounds, I assume this is all the further we go.”

“And where do you go from there? Half those women won’t want anything to do with a Shrike, and you know it.”

“Owl-Eagle told me I needed to go out to the rig with the same dose of drugs I took when I got my name the first time. I assume I’ll go back and…” she trails off as she leans in the doorway, pats her pockets for a pack of cigarettes. “...Do that, I guess.”

“Sounds like a solid plan, no way for _that_ to go wrong. And where does that leave me and Siri? You planning on bringing us back with you?” It’s not malicious, just curious. There’s a clack of a wooden spoon against the metal pot.

“I assumed. I also assumed you’d make your own decision about whether you came back with us or not, since you’re certainly old enough to make that choice yourself.”

“Aww, is the kid whose diapers I changed giving me permission to go where I please?” Poorwill laughs. “I think it's time I went back, though. It’s been a good long while, and since I don’t know what's gonna happen next with the Legion on your ass and the whole west in an uproar, I think it would be best for me to have more people with guns around me. Maybe some nice pre-war concrete block walls. A bunker or two. Just keep all the bases safe and covered.” Poorwill turns around then, locks yes with Siri. She shrugs. “We didn't wake you up?”

“No, no,” Siri reassures her, waves one hand, rubs at her eyes with the other. “I was awake before that.”

“Alright. Didn’t wanna be impolite.” Poorwill laughs a little. “Breakfast is as ready as it’s gonna get, if you two wanna eat.”

“Thank you,” Siri murmurs, stands, stretches until her back pops.

“So, Lucy, what’s our timeframe for this whole trip?” Poorwill asks, and scoops some sort of cornmeal goop into her bowl before scooping stew on top of it.

“While I’d love to stay here forever, I think the sooner we leave, the better.” Lucinda steps through the doorway, and a moment later, one of her ravens hops through after her. She heads for the kitchen. “It’s been almost a year since the Legion took the Mojave, but they’re still not going to be secure where they are. It’s only a year.”

“‘Only a year.’” Siri snorts. “They can get pretty far in a year, Lucy.”

“They’re still going to be trying to deal with the NCR presence, and a bunch of people who don’t want anything to do with them. This is our best shot, even if it’s not ideal conditions to…” Lucinda trails off. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

Siri hesitates for a moment, sets her blanket aside before she stands too.

“I want Caesar dead,” she says, low and slow. “And Lanius, and Lucius, and Vulpes, Cursor Lucullus and Dead Sea and Aurelius and every other man I saw raise his hand against a slave because we couldn’t fight back, I want all of them dead.” She steps past Lucinda, grabs her own bowl, doesn’t look at Lucinda or Poorwill as she serves herself with the spoon Lucinda passes to her without a word. “I don’t care if it’s fast, or if it’s slow, or if they repent. I want to see them all dead.”

“I can do that,” Lucinda says, quiet but forceful. “I need a better plan than ‘show up on Caesar’s doorstep with a gun,’ but I can do that.”

“Need more than just you, for that sort of mission,” Poorwill says, and settles onto Lucinda’s bed-couch with her bowl in her lap.

“There has to be someone back at Matamoros,” Lucinda says, takes a step like she’s about to start pacing before she stops short, shuffles her bowl in her hands.

“Doubt it,” Poorwill says. “What do you expect a bunch of two hundred year old women to do?”

“I--dammit,” Lucinda sighs.

“There have to be other women who are running from the Legion,” Siri says, steps past Lucinda to settle back on her couch-bed. “Some of them have to have ended up there, right?”

“Head Vulture might be interested, but god she’s how old now?”

“Old enough to be your grandmother, just about,” Poorwill says, blows on her spoon of cornmeal goop as it steams.

“We don't even know if she made it back,” Siri points out. Lucinda sits next to her after a moment.

“She made it back,” Poorwill says, waves one hand. “She's an unkillable old cuss and if she got out, she got back.”

“She might have got back, but she might not help,” Lucinda suggests. “You’re right, I do need to find more people.”

“Dunno where you will, but that's your first step once you're ‘Raven’ again. Get a clan behind you.”

“And the make sure every last person in charge ends up dead,” Siri says.

“We can leave tomorrow. Got nothing much here. Can carry my bird with me. Once you two are ready, we can go.”

“You seem eager to leave here,” Lucinda says, raises one eyebrow. Siri says nothing, focuses on eating, tries to slow her pounding heart, calm her shaking hands, keep her thoughts from racing too far ahead.

“Sounds like it’ll be more fun that sitting around here for another decade waiting for the rads to catch up with me.” Poorwill shrugs, looks at Lucinda with a flat gaze. “I’m old enough, I’ve seen enough, I think I’d rather be part of a failed revolution than sit on my ass and watch it all go past my doorstep.”

“‘Revolution’ makes it sound like we're taking up pitchforks and cannons and leading a revolt.” Lucinda snorts.

“Difference in weapons but it’s the same concept, ain’t it?” Poorwill asks. “‘Sides, I’ve seen that gun you carry around .That thing’s barely less than a cannon.”

Lucinda looks over to her gun, leaning next to the door, and grins slowly.

“I’ve killed deathclaws with that gun. One shot kills.”

“Bullshit,” Poorwill replies, leans in. “Two shots, I’ll give it to you. One shot? No fucking way.”

“Absolutely true.” Lucinda leans forward.

“Were you in a cast at the time?” Siri interrupts.

“No, this was after the robots fixed my leg,” Lucinda reassures her. “I got up on top of some machinery in an NCR quarry, and I staked it out for a full day. I made sure that deathclaw was right where I wanted it and then I shot it, right through the eye, into the brain. One shot, and _blam_ it was dead. Took more than that for the rest of them, because they all knew I was there, somewhere.”

“It’s a nice story.” Poorwill snorts. “Great to tell the Fledglings.”

“My coat is made of deathclaw leather, here.” Lucinda sets her bowl aside, grabs her coat, shoves it toward Poorwill, who sighs and takes it. “Check the grain and the skin pattern on the inside.”

‘Well, that _looks_ a lot like a deathclaw, sure,” Poorwill agrees. “Doesn’t mean it is though. Could fake it with the right tools and resources.”

“Aw, c’mon, just believe me, would you,” Lucinda grumbles.

“Not until you show me you can kill a deathclaw,” Poorwill replies.

“Please don’t kill a deathclaw while I’m with you. I’ve seen enough deathclaws to last me a lifetime.”

“Of course,” Lucinda agrees. “We’ll avoid them as best we can. We need to all get back to Matamoros, no time for stupid theatrics to prove a point.”

“You owe me a deathclaw, though, I’m not gonna forget that one.”

“Please don’t,” Siri sighs. “There’s a reason the word ‘death’ is in their names, and I’d really rather do the least amount of palliative care for disembowelment that I can.”

“Alright, alright. You’re right. No deathclaw fights. You two eat, and then we can get down to business, lock this place up so we can leave tomorrow.”


	6. Chapter 6

Poorwill’s bird is nestled in her pocket; one of Lucinda’s raven’s circles overhead, and her other raven and her vulture stay in their nests. Lucinda handed her the hymnbook early in the morning, told her to look for the pages marked “W” if she wanted walking songs.

Lucinda leads the way, legs and arms loose, looking up at the blue-faded dawn sky. It’s yellow on the horizon, just a soft glow still. Poorwill brings up the rear, walks with something uneven in her step-- _thunk-thnk, thunk-thnk, thunk-thnk_ on the hard-packed dirt road. Siri walks in the middle, does her best to navigate the thankfully-smooth road as she flips through pages.

Birds have started singing--chirping, more, no real sustained song--by the time Siri clears her throat.

“I think I’ve got one,” she says. “Page 294?”

“I need the words,” Lucinda says, looks down at the road. In a few places, the faint texture of concrete is visible, but mostly it’s been covered over with dirt. “Just read the first few and I should be able to get it.”

Siri clears her throat, puts her finger under the words to keep her place as she walks.

“‘I’m enlisted on the road, I’m almost done traveling, enlisted on the road, I’m almost done traveling--” she starts, and Lucinda picks up the song then.

“ _Enlisted on the road,_  
“I’m almost done traveling,  
I’m bound to go where feet shall lead.

" _My feet they shall lead where tribe, it lives,_  
_To enjoy the peaceful home of rest._  
_I’m bound to go where tribe, it lives,  
_And be there forever blest_.”_

____

____

Lucinda stops, then.

“It’s a good walking song,” she agrees. “I liked it when I was little, and I still like it now.”

“Your words are a bit different than the ones in the book,” Siri offers. She closes the book. 

“How different?” Lucinda asks.

“There’s something about Jesus in the words in the book. ‘I’m bound to go where Jesus is.’” Siri carries the tune carefully, wobbly, not quite sure if she’s doing it right.

Lucinda shrugs.

“I’m still not sure who Jesus is, but I know what tribe is.”

“I mean, I suppose that’s fair,” Siri sighs. “I think Jesus is some sort of pre-war religious figure?”

“Yeah,” Poorwill agrees. “There’s more details but that’s a good place to start.”

“What sort of details?” Lucinda asks, turns around to walk backwards. She’s got a cigarette between her teeth, but it’s unlit. “All we have is time.”

“They crucified him. That’s the most I remember. Born in a barn, crucified by a different caesar, a couple thousand years before the war. Big religious figure for a lot of the country. I never much got into him. Music is nice though.” Poorwill waves one hand, points to the hymnbook, still in Siri's hands. “And that’s all the more I remember or, really, matters nowadays.”

Lucinda snorts and turns back around.

“Well if you’re gonna be a spoilsport about it.”

“Really, it’s been two hundred years. You think I kept track of a religion I wasn’t for two centuries? I got better shit to do. What are all the minor gods of the Legion, hm? You keep all of ‘em in mind all the time?”

Lucinda makes a noise of disgruntlement. Siri snorts a little to herself.

“I remember most of them,” Siri says. “It’s not too difficult when people act like what you do is magic ordained by their gods. You learn to just agree.”

“Well, alright,” Poorwill grumbles. “You got me, but i still don’t remember.”

“That’s okay, we love you anyway,” Lucinda calls back over her shoulder, and starts humming the same song Siri had brought from the book.

***

They’ve been walking for five days, and Poorwill is asleep at the side of the fire, her bird nestled against her, against the curve under her chin. Lucinda sits a ways back, legs out in front of herself, knees up, machete across her thighs as she sharpens it. Siri stays close to the fire, turning her book to get the best light she can, until she finally gives up.

“Lucy?” she says, and looks up, toward Lucinda.

“Mmm?” Lucinda grunts, and sets her whetstone and machete aside. She tucks her knees up against herself, wraps her arms across her shins. She looks tired--dark circles under her eyes, short hair just long enough to fall over her eyebrows, her shoulders hunched around her ears.

“What happened with Raven,” Siri says, and pauses. She stares into the fire, and Lucinda doesn’t move. She keeps her eyes fixed on Siri, studying her face, the way she sits, what she’s looking at. “I’m still not…” Siri trails off, chews her bottom lip. “I care about you a lot, and I think things are about to start going...better.” She looks away from the fire, toward Lucinda, who still doesn't move, but holds Siri’s gaze. “But I want to know what happened.”

“She was three years older than me, part of another clan. We were friendly. She was a slave to the Legion. I bought her, freed her, we slept together, and I shot her in the morning.”

“Why?” Siri asks, and Lucinda takes a breath, sighs it back out, finally breaks eye contact.

“I didn’t…” She trails off, takes another breath. “I didn’t want anyone else to know who I was. I still don't, really. I don’t like being named Shrike and I don’t like being called Ravenkiller, and I didn’t--if no one else saw me, then maybe I could come back without the names.”

“But you claimed it, later.”

“I--changed my mind. I…” she trails off again. “I’ve had to face a lot of things in the last few months. Things would be different if I knew then what I know now.” Lucinda shrugs. She still doesn’t look at Siri.

“You're more upset about it than you sound like you would be, if it had been ‘just business.’” Siri murmurs, and pokes the fire. They’re not quite circling each other, gauging the other as they talk, but it’s something close. Neither looks at the other, each of them choosing her words carefully.

Poorwill shifts and her almost-snores turn into occasional, inconsistent snorts.

“She got a chance, and I didn’t,” Lucinda says, so quiet she can barely be heard over the crackle of the fire. “Why did she get a chance when so many of us didn’t, or wouldn’t, and I--” She cuts herself off, voice climbing higher and higher.

“You were jealous. You gave her the chance, and then you got jealous when she took it.” Siri snorts, shakes her head.

“I wasn’t--” Lucinda starts, and Siri looks her in the eye, tips her chin down, raises her eyebrows. Lucinda stops, leaves her mouth open like she’s going to say something, for a moment, and then looks away, shoulders still up and eyebrows still drawn down. “I was. And I should have acted better.”

“Yes, you should have,” Siri agrees.

“And I’m going to. I’m working on it. I’m doing what I need to,” Lucinda continues. “I’m doing better. I’ve learned since then.”

“You’ve never been in the same situation,” Siri says, low and quiet. She shifts closer to the fire. “And you certainly didn’t make the merciful choice in all those towns.”

“That was different,” Lucinda says.

“Was it?” Siri asks, sighs. 

“What I did to Raven, that’s all on me. I made that choice. The towns, that wasn’t my choice. Caesar and Vulpes and--and all of them, they told me to do it. That’s not on me.”

“You made an example lottery of more than one town, Lucy. You didn’t ‘have to’ do that, and you know it. You have a vulture, right over there,” Siri points at the vulture, which is comfortably nestled down for the night, “and from what you’ve told me, those people seem like they should be attached to that vulture.”

Lucinda is quiet, and she fiddles with the flap on her pack of cigarettes. “There’s a reason I said you’re an Owl. You get these sort of things better than I do.” Lucinda laughs, but it’s high-pitched and uncomfortable. “I’m gonna go out on a walk, I’ll yell if I need anything.”

“I’m done with the questions,” Siri agrees. “Try not to be out too late.”

Lucinda rolls to her feet, digs out her matches and lights a cigarette. She takes one drag, still standing in place, holds it for a long moment before breathing out.

“You’re right. Everything you said is right,” she says. “I just...I need to go think. You’re right. You’re right.”

“Just be back before there are too many night stalkers out. We don’t need you to get bitten. I can only do so much for night stalkers.”

“That’s okay. The robots made me harder to poison.” Lucinda stares off into the dark, tip of her cigarette glowing.

Siri gives Lucinda a long look, then shakes her head. “You need to tell me more about these robots sometime.”

“I will, don’t worry,” Lucinda murmurs, and smiles at Siri, before she turns around and walks out into the darkness.

***

It looks like it used to be an office building.

Lucinda stands in front of the open gates, feet shoulder width apart, hands on her hips, staring at the front door of the office building, waiting. Siri and Poorwill stand behind her.

There’s a man out at a bighorner pen, and Poorwill keeps looking at him, keeps Siri and Lucinda both between herself and him, even though he's on the other end of the walled-in yard. Siri looks between him and Lucinda. Lucinda, for her part, pays him no attention.

Another man comes out of the building, followed closely by an elderly ghoul leaning heavily on a cane.

“Who are you?” she yells as she stumps toward them, along the wide beaten-dirt path. “What’s your name, where are you from, why are you here, in that order!”

“Born to an adopted Magpie! First named Raven and now named Shrike! Grew to adulthood in the Legion! Come back now to make my amends!” Lucinda straightens up a little further, folds her hands behind her back. She’s stiff, nervous.

“And who are these with you?” The old woman calls back. She’s halfway toward them by now.

“That in the back is Poorwill, fourth station on our spring route, and this is Siri. She’s my friend, also fleeing the Legion. She doesn’t have a bird yet.” Lucinda gets quieter until she’s talking at normal volume as the old woman stops in front of her.

“Poorwill, Siri, you are of course welcome inside.” The woman gestures back toward the door. “You, Shrike, have some explaining.”

“Owl-Eagle sent me. She’s priestess for the Legion, to survive. She renamed me, and sent me to find the caretakers along the route, and the come back here, to re-earn my name.”

“Fast talking. How old were you when the Legion took you? You said a Magpie was your mother? Owl-Eagle was your Owl?”

“She wasn’t our Owl by the end, our Owl died and we didn’t have one when the Legion took us.”

“Which path did you take?” The old woman leans forward on her cane, narrows her eyes to search Lucinda’s face.

“West,” Lucinda says. “We were on the western one.”

 

“So you were the first to go, weren’t you. How old were you again?”

“Thirteen.”

“Barely named, by then. Well.” The old woman straightens up a little. “If Owl-Eagle gave you your penance, I trust her to have steered you right. Where do you go from here?”

“Out to the rig. I’ve got some datura, that does the same thing as the pre-war stuff does.”

“Mmm. Earn the name over again from the start, then.”

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees. She folds her hands behind herself again, looks down at the ground.

“You got named Shrike, though. That doesn’t go away just because you re-earned ‘Raven.’ Don’t get it in your head that it does.”

“I know,” Lucinda says. “Believe me, Poorwill made it known to me.”

“Good. Why don't you come in too, you can all eat, drink some water, set your things down, introduce your birds, and then we’ll see about getting you on your way.”

The old woman turns around, and the man who was next to her nods to Lucinda, then Siri, then Poorwill, and cuts across the yard, over toward where the other man is.

The inside of the building is nicely painted with whitewash, the linoleum-tile floor scrubbed clean except for a few new-looking footprints. The old woman takes a turn into the first door on the right of the hallway--it’s a kitchen, with an island in the center. There are cupboards and food lockers all around the walls, three stovetops, a dozen or so coffee percolators scattered around the room. There’s a stack of dirty plates and bowls and cups in one of the four sinks, and a stew pot sitting on the counter. There’s a laundry basket of rags next to one sink.

“Do any of you want coffee?” the old woman asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Poorwill agrees. 

“No, thank you,” Siri says, folds her hands in front of herself, stands with shoulders hunched.

“Can I smoke?” Lucinda asks.

“Go back outside,” the old woman replies. “We finally scrubbed most of the smoke smell out of this building and we don’t need you bringing it back.” She turns and wags one finger at Lucinda, who ducks her head and laughs. “Really though, please try to keep it outside. You know how bad the ventilation in the basement is.”

“Of course,” Lucinda agrees.

“Poorwill, how do you like your coffee?”

“Black,” she responds, leans against the island. “Been a long time since I’ve been back here. Left more than a hundred years ago, glad to see how nice this place looks now. It was kind of a pit back then.”

“We've had a decade and then some here to help clean everything up.” The old woman fills the percolator with water, reaches for a tin that’s dusted with brown-black coffee dust. “It’s been good to see this whole place come together again.” She heads toward the stove, percolator held up as she leans on her cane with the other hand.

“You had many visitors to appreciate it?” Poorwill asks, trails after the other woman. Lucinda and Siri stay standing just inside the door, Lucinda deflated from her stiff posture outside, Siri still a little folded in on herself. 

“Not many. A few of the tribes from south, but no one from the north, or from the west.”

“Didn’t figure,” Poorwill agrees, and levers herself up onto the island’s counter. The other woman glares at her, and Poorwill hops back off. “You gotten anyone else back from the Legion?”

“Just one, the bastards. Woulda hoped they’d underestimate how smart our girls were and they’d get loose, but so far we’ve only gotten one back.”

“Was it Head Vulture?” Lucinda asks, leans on the counter nearest to herself. She fiddles with her pack of cigarettes, but she’s watching the two women intently.

“How many Head Vultures did we have last time there were more than twenty five of us living in one place?” The woman snorts. “But yes. She’s a Vulture. The tech Vulture.”

“That’s Head Vulture,” Lucinda agrees, and she grins big. “Can I meet her? Where is she?”

“Go get your name back, then we’ll talk about letting you get deeper into the building.”

Lucinda deflates again, all at once.

“Right,” she says, distracted and quiet. “I can go out early tomorrow?”

“Early as you please,” the old woman agrees. “I’ll have the boys pull the little boat down to the water, leave everything you need there.”

“Thank you,” Lucinda says, “I’m going to go find somewhere to put my things down, while you get the coffee brewing.”

“I'll come with you,” Siri immediately volunteers. The old woman waves one hand, says nothing to stop them, and Lucinda leaves the room with Siri close behind.

Lucinda walks past a few doors--all open, but full of different things: one has a big circle of tables, surrounded by plastic chairs; another has shelves and shelves full of books, a third has what appear to be four homemade prison cells, all empty and with their doors open; a fourth is full of nailed-shut crates. She finally turns into the last room in the hall, before a staircase that leads upstairs, and a door at the end of the hall that’s propped open with a rock, leading out into a stairwell that leads down.

The room has a quartet of bunkbeds against the back wall, with dressers at their feet. Lucinda head for the one closest to the door, drops her pack onto it.

“Is this what all the accommodations look like?” Siri asks, looks around the room. The floor is dusty, but the windows are clean and the sheets on the beds look unstained. It looks more like no one lives there than it looks like it’s deliberately awful lodgings. 

“Some of them.” Lucinda shrugs, digs her favorite blanket out. She tosses it at the head of the bed. “There’s a good number of single rooms, a lot of rooms with four, five, six beds in them, a lot of them like this. The tribe never got much over seven clans’ worth of people, and there were plenty of people who didn’t mind sharing beds, so it’s not laid out like the barracks in the Legion cities.”

“So this isn't really much of a punishment.” Siri snorts a little, softly, almost-smiles as she decides on a bed of her own--the top bunk of the bed next to Lucinda’s.

Lucinda snorts, then, but it’s more hard-edged than Siri’s.

“It’s a punishment. Not a whip and a pillar or sleeping on the ground punishment, but. This is where you put visitors. People you aren't sure you want downstairs, where everyone else is. Where it’s really safe.”

“Like holding someone at arm’s length before hugging them, except telling them you’re doing it because you don’t trust them.” Siri swings her pack up onto the bed.

“Exactly.”

Lucinda lowers her vulture sling to the floor. The vulture hops out, begins to explore the room.

“It hurts more than you would think it would.”

“At least you have somewhere to come back to,” Siri says, quietly. “At least you have this place.”

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees, sits down on her bed, watches her vulture investigate a corner, then toddle along to check out the dark space under a bed. “I do have this.”


	7. Chapter 7

The sun isn’t up, when she rolls out of bed. It’s nowhere near being up, in fact--it’s past midnight, past the witch hour, but several hours yet until dawn arrives.

Siri is asleep, curled on her side, small and tight, blankets wound around her in a cocoon, one bare shoulder exposed, but even her face otherwise buried.

Lucinda’s older raven stirs awake when she stands up, slides her feet into her boots. The other raven follows shortly after, then the vulture--settled happily into her coat, tossed in the corner. All three birds hop after her as she shuffles out into the hallway. She heads toward the stairs, and the birds follow her up, in a hopping line.

There’s very little noise on this floor, at this time of day. An owl hoots, and another hoots back. The other birds are quiet, and Lucinda walks past pre-war cubicles cordoned off with chicken wire and wood. Most of them near the door have birds in them--songbirds, or a hawk, an owl. As she paces down the aisle, the cubicles empty out, until there’s a long string of nothing in them.

She swings one door open, and scoops up both her ravens, one in each hand. She deposits them inside, then closes the door behind them, locks it with one of the raven-proof locks hanging on a hook next to it, and slips the key into her pocket.

Her vulture she scoops up, and places in the cubicle next to the ravens, and it shakes itself out, settles down on the carpeted wooden box next to the door. This door gets a raven-proof lock too, and she drops that key into the same pocket.

She heads down the stairs, ducks back into the room to clean her things up--tosses her coat over the corner of the door, makes her bed, digs the canteen, a tin can full of kindling, and the dried datura root she brought back from Zion out of her pack, and heads out.

The streets are quiet at this hour--no dogs, a little too cold for insects, just the occasional song of a night bird, the hoot of a wild owl, a coyote laughing, a chunk of rock falling from a crumbling building, the distant sound of the ocean.

Out on the horizon, there’s an orange glow, just over the horizon, the pillar of thick black smoke hidden by the darkness.

There’s an outrigger canoe under a tarp, pulled up away from the high tide line. Lucinda takes the tarp off, folds it as nicely as she can, and stashes it on the canoe.

The canoe is heavy, but she manages to haul it down to the water’s edge before dawn breaks, even before the hint of dawn that rises behind the oil rig, and she paddles, slowly, out toward it, singing softly to herself.

***

There are monsters in the trees.

They had started as nothing more than flickers, after she had taken the pills the way Old Raven had told her to, but now they’re there, and they're real, and if she opens her eyes they’ll be standing there with their big wide mouths and all their teeth, and the spiders will climb out of their eyes and they’ll just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, the way they're still laughing now, and she can hear them, even when she puts her hands over her ears and screams.

There’s something great and yawning and hungry prowling the mountain.

Underneath the screaming there’s someone whispering the same thing over and over and she can’t quite hear it, can't quite grab ahold of the thought, can’t quite listen and understand.

Then she catches it, and understands.

_Open your eyes and see._

_Open your eyes and see._

_Open your eyes and see._

_Open your eyes and see._

_Open your eyes and see._

_Open your eyes and see._

_Open your eyes and see._

She opens her eyes and the shadow people are closer, laughing louder, their teeth whiter and sharper.

She closes her eyes, tries to block out the laughter, the whispering, and hears something heavy, breathing deep and wet, something prowling around her in the trees.

The sawing of the cicadas rises, louder and louder, broken by an alarm note from a bird she can't recognize, loud and clear, ringing out and echoing.

The cicadas keep buzzing, but the prowling in the woods stops, and she carefully, carefully opens her eyes.

The shadow people are gone, but there are--wasps? climbing the trees, scattered across the ground, the same big wasps with their bright orange wings and sleek black bodies that the old ladies would always rush them past quietly.

She claps her hands over her mouth, tries to not breathe, tries to keep them from noticing.

The cicadas just get louder and louder and louder until the buzz drowns out any other noise.

She closes her eyes and hears the whispering again.

She tries to ignore it this time.

***

Lucinda is gone, when Siri wakes up--her ravens and vulture gone from the room, too, but her bed neatly made, her pack still laying on top of the dresser, her coat tossed up on the corner of the open door.

There’s no one out in the hall, no one shaking her awake, no yelling, no firing weapons, no emergency, and god it still feels good to wake up when she wants. There’s some talking and laughing from down the hallway, and the light coming through the windows is still low and pale yellow, most of the sky fading into blue.

None of the talking is too loud, and Siri takes a minute to just lay in bed, study the white-painted ceiling. Lucinda said last night she would head out to the oil rig in the morning, and wanted to leave early. That’s where she is, most likely. There’s nowhere else for her to have gone, unless she’s out in the kitchen.

She hears someone laugh, loud and long, at something she can’t quite hear, and she takes that as her cue to get up. Her clothes are still on the floor where she left them last night, stiff with dust and sweat. She kicks them aside, closes the door as best she can without removing Lucinda’s coat.

She opens the dresser at the foot of her bunk, first, is relieved to find a ragged sweatshirt in the first drawer, with two similarly ragged t-shirts. The bottom drawer of the dresser has four pairs of jeans, and she pulls them out, starts trying them on. The third pair fits, and she quietly steps out into the hallway in bare feet.

Most doors are only as open as they were the night before, but the door to the room full of tables is all the way open, and there are at least a dozen women--all of them old, but only a couple ghouls, and all of varying heights, weights, ethnicities. The old woman who invited them in yesterday evening grunts loudly through her mouthful of coffee, waves to Siri when she sees her in the doorway.

Siri freezes.

“Come in, come in. Siri! Everybody, this is Siri.” Everyone at the table turns to look at her, all of them smiling. “Our Shrike mentioned Siri is a doctor. Escaped the Legion.”

“Where are you from?” the tallest of the women asks. She has a deep, booming voice--clearly the one who was laughing earlier. She has her eyebrows raised, face open and friendly. She has one leg stretched out in front of herself, stiff and awkward, the other tucked up against the chair.

Siri chokes for a moment, can feel the weight of so many eyes on her, crumbling her inward, before she manages to stammer out, “New Mexico.”

“Town?” the tall woman asks.

“Yeah,” Siri agrees. Then, a moment later. “Nowhere interesting.”

“Where’d you learn doctoring?” another woman asks--pointy-faced, hair shaved down to stubble, with narrow shoulders and fidgety hands. She has wide, questioning eyes too--it doesn’t feel like an interrogation, just a question.

“I apprenticed to a doctor a few towns over. Her name was Anja.”

“A pretty name,” says a third woman. This woman is short, but broad--square face, square shoulders, no waist to speak of, hands like shovels. 

“She was a good person,” Siri says. She folds in a little, tries to soften her shoulders, but she folds her hands behind herself out of habit, hunches a little, tries to not look at anyone in particular for too long. “Wanted to help people.”

“Seems like you did too, huh?” the tall one asks. She waves Siri in. “C’mon in, sit down, have breakfast. You like coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Siri agrees.

“You want a donut too?” the tall one asks, and she reaches for something hanging on the back of her chair. It turns out to be a walking cane, it’s far end studded with nails. She stands with some small effort. “There’s ones with fruit and ones without, which you want?”

“W-with, please.” Siri chokes again as she cautiously sits down at the table, hands in her lap.

“Good choice,” the tall one says, and winks at Siri before disappearing into the kitchen with a speedy _tmp-thunk tmp_.

“Don’t let her bother you,” the woman from last night says. She raises her voice. “Just tell her to fuck off if she tries to get your goat.”

“I can hear you just fine, I’m lame, not deaf,” the tall woman calls back. There’s the sound of pouring coffee, a shuffle of paper on the countertop, then the _tmp-thunk tmp_ as she returns to the dining hall and sets down a mug of coffee and a plain-looking palm-sized lump of a donut in front of Siri. Siri picks up the donut first, takes a delicate bite out of the edge. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself,” the tall woman says, and holds out her hand--a little awkwardly, like she forgot how a handshake works. Siri takes her hand after a moment of staring at it. Her hand is warm, textured, scattered in various calluses across her palm, her fingers, her knuckles, the side of her hand. “These yahoos call me Tech Vulture, but your ah, hmm. The kid who brought you here, she woulda known me as Head Vulture.” She drops Siri’s hand, settles back into her seat, picks up her own coffee mug--chipped, with the words WORLD’S OKAYEST MOM emblazoned on the outward-facing side--and takes a sip.

“Just call her the Shrike, you sentimental old shit,” the square woman says. “It’s not that hard to change her name back.” She takes a sip of her coffee, glances at Siri. “Probably.” She sets her coffee down and smiles at Siri. “I’m Cardinal. Only one in the tribe now, so I don’t need any extra names.”

“I ain’t calling her that until I’ve seen her with my own two eyes,” Head Vulture replies, takes loud slurp of coffee, looks Cardinal in the eye as Cardinal gives her a sidelong glance and rolls her eyes.

“We get it, you changed her diapers, she can do no wrong. Call it a placeholder name if it makes you feel better.” There’s an edge to Cardinal’s voice. 

“It’s more that the Owl that changed her name was hardly an Owl anymore anyway, how’s she gonna know what constitutes a name change?” Head Vulture replies. She rocks back in her chair.

“It was justified,” Siri says, quietly, into her coffee. Head Vulture looks at her sidelong, a silent calculating look, then shrugs. Cardinal raises her eyebrows and gives Head Vulture a sharp, chin-led nod. Head Vulture rolls her eyes.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” the woman from last night sighs, and sweeps her hands together, “Swan, you had a story you were telling?”

“Yeah!” The pointy woman--Swan, apparently--looks relieved with the change in subject. “So I’m shifting boxes around looking for the textbooks and you know what I find in the box where the textbooks are supposed to be?” She pulls something from the front pocket of her sweatshirt with a flourish, smacks it down on the tabletop with a thick paper sound. It unrolls to show a scantily clad woman in just a bikini, lips parted, eyes vacant, on her hands and knees on a rock at a waterfront. Swan scowls, crosses her arms, looks around at the gathered women as if they'll have an answer. 

Instead of an answer, most of them have their eyebrows raised, and about half are laughing into their coffee. Another woman, this one with a long oval face, reaches over, drags the magazine closer to herself, flips through a few pages with an evaluating look on her face.

“Pretty recent vintage. This is pretty nice.”

“Hey now, pass it over,” calls another woman--this one long and thin, with too much chin and forehead, and a thick dusting of freckles across her whole face and the backs of her hands--and she waves one hand like she wants someone to throw it to her. “Don’t hog it.”

“Oh no, I’m not going to let _that_ float around in this building, no way,” Swan insists, and reaches for the magazine. “Finch, hand that back to me.”

“Huh-uh, no way,” Finch replies, still flipping through the magazine. “No way am I letting _you_ keep this.”

“Give that back!” Swan orders, reaches across the table, and Finch hops up, takes a few steps backward, magazine still open.

“Not gonna happen!” Finch sing-songs. “Hey Sparrow, you like super mutants? There’s a super mutant in here.” Finch holds up the magazine, open to a centerfold of an entirely naked super mutant. Head Vulture hoots and Finch waggles her eyebrows as she shows the centerfold around. Swan scowls and crosses her arms again.

The freckled woman--Sparrow--sits back in her chair, rubs at her chin with one hand, keeps her eyebrows drawn together, one eye squinted shut as she pretends to think.

“I mean, I can’t think of any real complaints, toss it on over.” She holds her hands up, and Finch lofts it in a gentle, perfect arc to land in Sparrow’s hands. She flips it to the centerfold immediately. “Oooh, I wish I still had abs like that,” she sighs.

“Don’t we all,” Finch laments, and takes her seat again. Swan shoots her a dirty look, and Finch flutters her eyelashes and smiles.

Siri looks to the woman from last night, lifts one hand to catch her gaze.

“I didn’t get your name last night,” she says, soft, still careful around so many new people.

“I'm a Vulture,” she says. “But since we obviously have others, they call me Regina.” She raises her mug and takes a drink, and Siri mirrors her. “Would you like another donut? I think Techie there got you the single smallest donut we had. Come with me, let’s get you a better donut.”

“I’ll have you know I picked the biggest one, you slanderer,” Head Vulture replies, mild, smile in her eyes as Regina stands up and walks around the table toward the kitchen. Siri stands too, when Regina is close, and follows her into the kitchen.

“There’s more coffee in any of the pots there, I’m sure,” Regina says. “And there are the donuts next to them.” She leans against the counter. “Are you alright? It’s easy to forget how…” She trails off, searches for the right word. “Overwhelming, I suppose, that they can all be when you’re new here. Most women have a chance to get to know a whole clan first before they end up here. I know it can be a lot.” She shrugs, frowns, searches Siri’s face.

Siri turns to refill her coffee mug from the pot, makes a show of studying the various donuts--there are a dozen of the same fruit-filled ones she had, and another dozen ring-shaped, non-filled ones.

“I just need to settle in a bit more, I think,” Siri says. “It is just a lot all at once, I’ll be alright, but thank you for worrying.”

“Alright. You need anything, talk to me or…” Regina trails off ,considers the women in the dining room. “Tech Vulture, probably. She knows Shrike, helped raise her, she’ll feel loyal to you as coulda-been-clan. She was held by the Legion too. You’ve got that common ground.”

“Thank you,” Siri murmurs, finally turns around with one of the ring-donuts in her hand. “I might, go back to my room. Take a few minutes.”

“You take all the time you need,” Regina replies. You can leave through the kitchen if you want, I’ll keep them distracted so no one calls you back in. They’d understand, but I know it’s...uncomfortable.”

“Thank you. Are there any sort of mealtimes?” Siri hesitates for a moment before taking another fruit-filled donut. She looks at Regina, watches for any acknowledgement, and relaxes a little when there isn’t one.

“I’ll send someone by if you’re still in your room when we have lunch and dinner. It’s not very regimented, but usually it’s around midday and sundown. We can leave you alone, otherwise, if you’d like, while you settle in.”

“I just need a day or two to put my things away, I think. Maybe to clean my clothes, if you have a place to wash them. They’re…they may be unsalvageable at this point.”

“We have a few women who are good with a needle and thread, they can fix any tears.”

“I think they may be stained beyond repair, unfortunately.”

“What are a few stains between friends?” Regina asks, smiles. “We have a windmill and a basin out in back of the building, you can wash blankets and things as well. Yourself, too, if you feel the need.”

Siri thinks for a moment, and her eyes go wide before she sighs.

“You have soap?”

“I’ll bring some up to you in a bit. You go rest and eat your donuts, and I’ll get you the soap once I’ve finish _my_ breakfast. That’ll give you a chance to decide what to wash. Things take a bit to dry here, so take that into account. It might be tonight by the time they’re dry enough to use.”

“I'll keep it in mind, thank you. I’ll leave the door to the room open, you can come in when you bring the soap. Of course.’

“I’ll make sure I knock,” Regina laughs. “Now you go, I’ll catch you later.” She turns away heads back into the dining room. Siri waits until she hears Regina’s voice join the talking before she heads out the kitchen door, then back down the hall, past the dining room and the storerooms, back to the guest room.

She sets her coffee and her donuts on the dresser at the end of her bed, and considers what she has to wash.

She picks up her dusty, sweat-stiff clothes and tosses them into their same pile, halfway across the room. She opens her pack, digs until she finds the wad of sweat-mud damp socks, tosses them over too, then her single pair of underwear.

She stands and strips the blanket from her bed, hesitates for a moment before grabbing the blanket from Lucinda’s bed too, tossing those onto the pile before readjusting and bundling everything into Lucinda’s blanket.

Everything dusty, grimy, and sweaty bundled together, she starts opening drawers. She finds a pair of tire-and-rope sandals in the bottom drawer of Lucinda’s dresser, and slips them on. They fit well enough, for a pair of clearly-homemade sandals. There are shorts, tank tops, a sad and ragged bra, a pair of boxer shorts, a half dozen pairs of jeans, and a dozen t-shirts in varying colors, with varying logos, all of varying ages. She dumps everything on the bed, starts going through things trying them on until she finds things that seem to fit--the bra doesn’t, and she’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed; there’s one pair of jeans that are wide enough in the hips, if a bit short in the leg, another that’s wide enough in the hips but needs cuffed so she doesn’t shred the hems anymore than they already are; none of the shorts have pockets and she tosses them aside.

At the end, she has three shirts and two pairs of pants, and she tosses those onto the pile too--they’re probably clean, but if there's the water and the soap, why not make sure? 

She puts the clothes that don’t fit back into the drawers, then settles on the bottom bunk of her bed with her textbook, restarts her reading where she left off.


	8. Chapter 8

Head Vulture is the one who comes bearing bars of soap--five of them, big, blocky, ugly off-white things, wrapped in what looks like it might have been a dishtowel once. SHe knocks before she thumps into the room, sets the soap blocks on top of Lucinda’s pack.

“Reggie sent me up with the soap. You c’n move downstairs, if you want, you don’t have to stay in the guest quarters. Unless you’ve secretly been named Shrike too, we got no reason to keep you at arm’s length like this.” She leans on the dresser with one elbow. Her eyes are lowered, sleepy almost. Siri sits up.

“I think I’m more comfortable here, still.”

“Cause you’re new?” Head Vulture asks, mouth cocked in a grin.

“Because I’m new,” Siri agrees with a little laugh. “I’m sure once I know everyone a little better I’ll feel more comfortable everywhere, but.”

“It’s hard, after those fucks.” Head Vulture steps further into the room, navigates with her stiff leg so she can sit on Lucinda’s bed, so she and Siri face each other. She still keeps her eyes down, and her voice quiet, a wide departure from her earlier loudness. “I’m not gonna talk about it, but Reggie seems to think we’ll bond over seeing the same sort of shit, so I thought I should warn you, at least.”

“So long as they don’t ask questions either, I think that would be fine.”

“I’ll try to keep ‘em off you. They won’t ask until you’ve been here a while. You’re all new, so there’s all sorts of stuff they can ask you. They’ll ask you about your girlfriends and your boyfriends and your mom and dad and your town and what sort of doctoring is your favorite and what the worst thing you’ve seen someone shit out is, what’s your opinion on this bird or that bird and what about that one, how do you feel about dogs, oh, did we catch you staring at that _boooooy_ over there?” Head Vulture makes a gagging noise in the back of her throat, rolls her eyes. “I love ‘em, but they’re fucking insufferable sometimes.”

Siri laughs a little, gives Head Vulture a tight smile. Head Vulture smiles back, wide and soft and genuine.

“Tough crowd, huh?”

“It’s been four years of holding my tongue. It’s a difficult habit to break.”

“Never kept my head down, just kept my mouth closed.” Head Vulture shrugs. “Not judging you, just saying. Got me a broken leg for the trouble.” She shakes her head, almost-laughs. “You want help with your laundry?”

“No, I can do it on my own, but thank you.”

“I’m trying to make friends here, throw me a bone,” Head Vulture laughs, and stands up. “I’ll carry the soap.”

Siri laughs and sets her book aside. She gathers up the blanket, and follows Head Vulture down a turn in the hallway, out to the back of the building. 

“If you wanna take a bath I'll do the right thing and go back inside, but you’re gonna wanna wash your clothes first, cause those are gonna take all day to dry, especially those blankets. It’s too fucking humid here, take me back to Colorado where it’s so dry I feel like my eyeballs are gonna shrivel right out of my head.”

“I do miss not feeling like I’m going to steam to death,” Siri sighs.

“For what it’s worth, you get used to it in a couple weeks. Doesn’t make you feel any less sticky, but at least you stop feeling quite so miserable.” Head Vulture heads toward a lazily-spinning windmill, sets the blocks of soap down on the bench next to the gently sloshing-over water tank. She sits down on the bench too, takes off her boots and socks to rest her bare feet in the mud.

“I appreciate the reassurance.” Siri looks around for the basin, drops the blanket in the mud after only a moment of hesitation.

“Mmmm, is that sarcasm I hear?” Head Vulture drops her voice low, almost like a flirt, but there’s enough laughter in her tone it’s clearly not.

“Never,” Siri replies, keeps her back to Head Vulture, tries her best to not smile.

“There we go, that’s what I like to hear!” Head Vulture slaps her thigh and laughs.

“Are you going to help me do laundry, or are you going to sit there and mock me?” Siri asks, trots toward the flipped-over basin sitting in the shadow of the building. She tips it back onto its side and rolls it over.

“Oh, but I’m a crippled old woman, I can’t do laundry. You’re still young and spry, I think I’ll just sit here and provide pleasant company.”

Siri huffs and drops the basin over onto its bottom, finally, when it’s close enough to the water tank. She straightens up, puts her hands on her hips, surveys all in front of her--water tank; windmill; basin; Head Vulture, still sockless and shoeless on the saggy bench; a block of soap; all her dirty clothes; and the lone dented bucket underneath the bench.

“You only get pleasant conversation if you help somehow,” Siri says, finally. “Pass me the bucket.”

“Yes ma’am.” Head Vulture gives her a loose salute and grabs the bucket, tosses it over. “It’s usually about fifteen buckets to get it comfortably deep.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Siri begins to scoop water from the tank into the basin, and Head Vulture watches in silence. Siri doesn’t speak either, for a long time.

She’s seven buckets in when she takes a finishing breath and rests her hands on her knees, looks up at Head Vulture.

“May I ask you a question?” she asks.

“What sort of question?” Head Vulture asks. She’s digging through her pockets, pulls out a folding knife she studies like she’s never seen it before in her life, before putting it back in her pocket.

“About your leg,” Siri says, and scoops another bucket of water.

“And how specific an answer you want?” Head Vulture asks, and leans forward a little.

“As specific as you feel like being, no more.”

“Then shoot.” Head Vulture sits back again.

“How long have you been dealing with your leg?”

“About...eight years ago now?” She chews on her bottom lip as she figures, nods when she finishes her math. “Didn’t keep my mouth shut, some punkass legionary decided he was going to make an example of me. Only needed my hands and my head after all, who gives a shit if the weapons genius slave can’t walk. Don’t need to be able to walk to fix guns.” She shrugs. “We treated it as best we could, but there wasn’t anyone in that tent who was a doctor, and it healed bad.”

“How did you treat it?” Siri asks, buckets more water into the basin. It’s getting near full enough to wash things in, and she holds the bucket aside, tries to decide if it _is_ enough.

“Made a little crank, did what I could to pull everything back where it was supposed to be. Made as good of a splint as I could with what I had, which was a couple sticks and some rope, but. I could get some weight on it, and that’s all I needed. Just needed to get to and from work. Figrured I didn’t have anything better to fix it for real, nothin’ like what I heard they had before the war, so why put any more toward it than I absolutely had to.” She sighs. “Wish I’d bothered, now.”

“I could take a look at it, sometime, see if there’s anything I can do to help.” Siri scoops another bucket of water. “At this late stage, though, likely all I can do is offer you painkillers.”

“I’ve tried every painkiller I could get my hands on. Had to struggle my way out of a hydra addiction a couple years ago, but even that didn’t help. You can take a look at it, if you wanna, and this ain’t a hit on your doctoring abilities, but I think it’s beyond painkillers at this point.”

Head Vulture grabs a bar of soap and passes it over to Siri, who takes it before she picks up her clothes and starts tossing them in the basin.

“Well.” Siri studies the blankets for a moment before leaving them aside. “I’m here to help, however I can.”

“You’re a good woman. Hey.” Head Vulture leans forward a little, again, raises one eyebrow. “Question for question? Same rules you gave.”

“Sure. I won’t talk about the worst of the things I’ve seen, or anyone’s medical history in particular, but you can ask anything else.”

“Got it. Won’t ask anything I wouldn't answer. What cities have you been through? There’s someone I’m looking for and I wanna know if you might have seen her.”

Siri scrunches her face up as she thinks.

“Albuquerque was the first big city I was in. Santa Fe, then up into Pueblo and Red Springs, and then back down to Phoenix, and then through Flagstaff up the 17, and then the 40 across to New Vegas.”

“So, shit, nothing into Dog Town, Buena Vista, anywhere near Flatwater? Red Springs was the closest you got?”

“Unfortunately. Sorry.” Siri shrugs, swishes her clothes around in the tub. The water is already clouded, and her clothes don’t crunch anymore, though they’re still clearly dirty. She drops the bar of soap into the pair of pants and begins to suds it up. “My question: who are you looking for?”

“My wife. Her name is Henny, we were born to the same tribe, I’m a few years older. We left together. Thought about having kids, after we left, but just never got around to it, and now she’s a bit old for it, so we’re just gonna have to make do with what’s left of this tribe. She always liked babies. She’s a Vulture too, and she’s quiet enough they wouldn’t have beat her to death for running her mouth. She got scared when people got loud and angry and violent. I’m sure she’s still alive, she was too quiet for the Legion to care much.” Head Vulture pauses for a long moment. “My turn?”

“Yeah,” Siri agrees, pulls the pants out of the water in a cascade of murk so she can look over the stains one by one. She chews on her bottom lip and she flips them partially inside-out, grabs the bar of soap again, and scrubs at the rusty bloodstain in the crotch.

“You mentioned Anja earlier, said she was a doctor. What was she to you?” Head Vulture’s voice is warm, curious. Siri sighs, continues to chew on her bottom lip as she lowers the pants and soap back into the water.

“She was a good friend. I thought she was very pretty, and she knew, but mostly I was apprenticed to her to learn medicine.”

“And that’s all?” Head Vulture seems surprised, her eyebrows raised, like she’s waiting for some further juicy detail.

“We lived together for about a year and a half, I would sleep on her couch. We kissed once, when we were both little drunk, at the town holiday party. We both agreed right after that we wouldn’t do it again, drunk, and maybe shouldn't do it again sober either. Is that enough detail?” Siri raises one eyebrow, looks at Head Vulture through her lashes.

“That’s more like what I expected,” Head Vulture agrees, and sits back, satisfied. “What’s your next question?”

“What tribe were you and--Henny?”

“Yeah.”

“What tribe were you born to?”

Head Vulture straightens up, inclines her chin, puts her hands on her knees. She’s proud.

“Reavers, born and bred. Got born and then they gave me a soldering iron and showed me how to fix a laser rifle.” She laughs. “And before you ask, ended up here because I got tired of the scenery and Henny wanted out of the tribe. I coulda stayed, but, you know how it gets when you care about someone. She wanted out, so I went with her.”

Siri nods, continues scrubbing. The stain is almost gone, now, but she thinks she can get just a little more of it. “Your turn for a question.”

“Stop me if this one gets too personal, but what’s Little Bird to you? She brought you here, and Poorwill too, but Poorwill said you two showed up on her doorstep together.”

“How honest of an answer do you want?” Siri asks. She gives up on what’s left of the stain--it’s not visible on the outside of the jeans, which is really the important part, and what’s still there isn’t budging--and checks down the legs for dirt and grass stains, scrubs at a few of them half-heartedly.

“You know she got renamed Shrike, but you don’t know the tribe baggage that comes with the name, no offense meant.” Head Vulture shifts in her seat, pulls out her knife again, flips it open, starts studying the blade. “There’s nothing you can say about her that’s gonna be a surprise to me.”

“I saved her life, and then we were friends for a while, and we were…” Siri trails off, scowls at the pants, finally gives up on the worst of the grass stains. She stands, pulls the pants from the water, and wrings them out before slinging them over her shoulder and kneeling to work on a shirt. “We ended up being very close. We...there was...she…” Siri trails off again, sighs through her nose. “She killed NCR civilians. Maybe more people. She killed another Raven from this tribe, and all of that is why Owl-Eagle renamed her. We haven’t--it’s hard to look at someone the same when you learn that.” 

Head Vulture hums, low and soft.

“So you were close?”

“We were,” Siri agrees. Most of the dirt has lifted off this shirt already, and she scrubs at the few remaining stains with the bar of soap. They come off easily.

“Held hands?” Head Vulture prompts. She keeps studying her knife, pointedly doesn’t look at Siri.

“Yes.” Siri raises one eyebrow but doesn't look up as she pulls the shirt from the water, wrings it out, slings it over her shoulder on top of the jeans. She grabs another.

“Kissed?”

“This is getting awfully personal.” Siri looks up at Head Vulture then, both eyebrows raised.

“You’re right. My apologies.” There’s a click of the blade, and Head Vulture puts the knife away. “You have another question for me?”

“What were the other women in your clan like?”

“Anyone in particular?” Head Vulture asks. “Here, I’ll take the clean stuff over to the line.”

“Thank you.” Siri hands over the shirt and pants. “Tell me about Owl-Eagle, since I’ve met her.”

“Head over heels for Old Raven from the moment they met.” Head Vulture heads toward the clothesline. “Was a witch for whatever tribe she’d been before, did that with us for a couple decades, then realized she wanted to kill things instead of tell the future.” She tosses the pants and shirt over the line while she looks for clothespins, starts hanging the shirt first. “Smoked like a chimney. Sharp as a tack, wouldn’t take any shit from you if you thought you could get away with something. Was good at finding water, same way Pigeons are good at directions.” She finishes hanging the shirt, grabs the jeans next. “Loved Little Bird, same way we all did. Loved both the kids in the clan.”

“What about Old Raven?” Siri asks, finishes this shirt, checks the other shirts--both ones from the drawers, and she does a quick check for stains and, finding none, tosses them over her shoulder too after wringing them out.

“Born to this tribe. Good with directions. Had an eye for people, but that's all Ravens, so maybe that ain’t notable.” Head Vulture comes back over, takes the shirts from Siri, and head back toward the line. “Took in Adopted Magpie and treated her like her own daughter immediately. A good woman, had to have another two decades left in her. Saw her angry right up until the end. Shoulda gotten a chance to act on it.”

“Who was Adopted Magpie?” Siri sloshes the water around the basin, finds her socks and underwear under her second pair of pants. She scrubs her socks across the bar of soap quickly, but they’re too stained for it to make much of a difference. She grabs the pants instead.

“That’d be Little Bird’s mother. Barely more than a kid when she showed up in our camp, nine months pregnant and begging for protection. Me and Raven and all the Eagles and Vultures stayed up all night to make sure no one followed her and was going to hurt her. Real quiet, same as you and Henny.” Head Vulture finishes hanging up the second batch of clothes, turns back toward Siri. “Had an eye for valuables, though. Good with tools and trading, as long as we didn’t expect her to be loud and fun.”

“I know where Owl-Eagle ended up, but what happened to the other two?”

“Shot. Raven because she was the most in charge and you know how the Legion is. Adopted Magpie because Little Bird was old enough to get on without her, and she resisted. Quietly, but it was resistance. That was that. Dunno what happened to their bodies after, doubt the Legion sent anyone back to bury them, so I’ll bet Raven got to move on, at any rate. Dunno about the rest of them.”

“I’m sorry,” Siri murmurs. 

“Not like you killed them. Nothing for _you_ to apologize for.”

“I’m still sorry it had to happen here.”

“Yeah, me too,” Head Vulture agrees. “Hey, you gonna take a bath? I’ll tell everyone to steer clear while you do, I gotta go do some stuff inside.”

“I think I will, thank you. I'll be back in in a while.” Siri tosses her socks and underwear onto the bench, then the last pair of jeans. “I need to do these blankets, too.”

“Ouch, good luck with those. I hate bedsheets.”

“Thanks,” Siri sighs, and tosses the first blanket into the tub to soak. She scoops up the socks, underwear, and jeans, and heads toward the line. Head Vulture turns and heads back inside without another word.


	9. Chapter 9

Siri is alone in the kitchen, well after dark, nibbling on the last donut from breakfast, when Swan walks in. Swan looks at her for a moment, then goes to the cupboard she was apparently originally headed for, climbs up on the counter with a grunt, pulls down a shoebox of something. She opens the lid and pulls out a packet of potato chips, before putting the box back. She opens the pouch, then turns around, looks at Siri, and pops a chip in her mouth.

“Shrike says you’re an owl, doesn’t she?” Swan asks when she finishes chewing.

“That’s what she told me, yes,” Siri agrees. “I don’t feel like I know enough to disagree.”

“Well, I do, and she’s wrong.” Swan gives her a critical look with her clearer eye. “You’re a Vulture if I’ve ever seen one.”

Siri snorts and tries to contain her glare.

“Don’t give me that look. You wouldn’t know mysticism if it bit you in the ass. You’re not _all_ vulture. You’re…” Swan trails off, and she settles at the table, her own cup of coffee held in one hand. “Vulture, and a Raven.”

“And how do you figure that?” Siri asks. “Owl makes sense, because medicine and magic are the same in so many tribes, but.” She shakes her head and takes a bite from her donut.

“You’re from a town in New Mexico, right?” Swan asks, leans forward a little.

“Yes,” Siri agrees.

“And what happened to it?”

“They burned it.”

“And how many of you didn’t burn with it?”

“Maybe…” Siri trails off, studies the peeling paper on the cupboard behind Swan. “Maybe a dozen of us?” she finally says, lets her eyes slide back to Swan. 

“That’s a Vulture,” Swan says. “Vulture is the woman standing when everyone else is burning or bleeding or crushed. No shame in it. Just means you’re the last one standing. Means you know what it takes to live through to your next day.”

“That’s easy to swallow,” Siri agrees, with a small nod. She wraps her hands around her mug, tighter, and starts studying the paper again.

“Now, I figure Raven too. We don’t have a bird for doctors, birds aren’t really known for their doctoring abilities.” Swan laughs, and it comes out only a shade softer than a cackle. “But you’re smart. You’re good enough at medicine now to have been someone important to the Legion.”

“I had some schooling before the Legion,” Siri interrupts. “I didn’t finish.”

“Mmm, good, I trust you more with a scalpel now.” Swan nods, studies Siri’s face. “And what did the Legion have you do as medicine?”

“I was in charge of the medical division of the Fort. At least, anything that the women did. The men didn’t--” She catches herself, corrects herself. “ _Wouldn’t_ follow my orders.”

“So.” Swan leans forward, grinning. “You were smart, because you did real doctoring school, and you were in charge, because you knew your shit.” She sits back, grinning even wider. “That’s a Raven.”

Siri laughs and ducks her head.

“I couldn’t lead a tribe. I really appreciate that you think I could, but I couldn’t--”

“Who says you need to run a clan?” Swan asks. She leans forward again. “We’re a dead tribe, Raven. We’re a dead tribe full of dying old women, and if we let Shrike back in, my bet is what’s left rots from the inside out. But you--what do you think happens to us here? How long until we’ve fallen and broken all our hips? When do we all get the flu and die coughing in our beds of wet lung? What happens when the next tribe over decided they have no respect for their elders and murders us all in a raid that gets them a year’s supply of coffee, a lot of tomatoes, and three dozen chickens?” She sits back again, takes sip of her coffee. “We always have some women who stay behind here. We could use a Raven around, especially one who’s good with a needle and a scalpel.”

Siri is quiet, takes a sip of her own coffee as she continues to consider the wallpaper.

“I’ll think about it.”

“We’ve always been the last refuge of women from dying tribes,” Swan says, quiet, into her fistful of chips. She’s not looking at Siri, but it’s like she’s trying not too. She’s studying the well-worn grain of the island’s countertop instead. “We have a place for women like you.”

“I know, and I appreciate the offer, I just--want a little time to think.”

“Oh! of course,” Swan agrees. “Well, I gotta go to bed. You have the run of the place, try not to wake anyone up, you know where to find us if you need anything else.” She slides off the counter, walks around the island toward the door to the hallway.

“I might go out and enjoy the stars without worrying about deathclaws, for the first time in the last four years.” Siri sighs and finishes the last of her donut.

“That’s the spirit!” Swan, laughs, and pats Siri’s shoulder as she passes. “You won’t get into any trouble here, so you go and enjoy yourself.”

“I’ll try,” Siri agrees, softly, as Swan disappears down the hallway behind her.

***

Head Vulture had knocks on Siri’s door, just after dawn.

“Hey,” she says, when Siri answers the door, still rubbing at her eyes. “You wanna meet some birds?”

“Are there more of you I haven’t met?” Siri asks, almost sighs, and then she yawns. She opens the door the rest of the way.

Head Vulture snorts.

“Real clever, but I meant the little flappy ones.”

“You--oh.” Siri squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “Sorry. I just woke up.”

“No harm done. So, you wanna meet some birds?”

“I--sure?” Siri squints at Head Vulture, who bounces a little on her heels.

“Come on. Little Bird left her birds here and I thought I should go feed ‘em since she didn’t get back last night and they gotta be getting hungry.”

“Mmmm.” Siri slips her feet into her sandals, and leaves the door open as she follows Head Vulture down the hall to the stairs.

Head Vulture is up the stairs faster than Siri expected, and she opens the door on the next floor landing.

“I had a discussion with Swan last night,” Siri says, as Head Vulture steps through the door.

“She tell you you oughta get married before you fuck someone?” Head Vulture asks. “She gave me that one three times before I finally told her me’n Henny’d been married for three years already.”

“She...no.”

“Good. We’ve been telling her to not pull that one out anymore. She’s the only who cares, just for the record.” Head Vulture looks back over her shoulder, eyebrows raised, as she heads out into a room full of floor-to-ceiling chicken-wired cubicles.

“Thanks.” Siri sighs.

“This is where we keep the birds, I usually let mine out to forage on her own, so I’m just here to feed Little Bird’s.”

“Is that typical?”

“We draw straws for who has to feed the birds, most of the time. Most folks’ll take the big mean meat-eaters out every couple days, just to make sure they’re getting enough food. Keep their wings in good shape.” She makes a sharp turn, halfway down the aisle, ducks into a cubicle with a refrigerator sitting in one corner. “But you were saying you and Swan talked?”

“We did.”

“You need me to yell at her for you for any reason at all?” Head Vulture swings open the fridge and pulls out a rabbit carcass. She drops it onto the linoleum topped-table and grabs a knife in one easy movement. “Oh, how are you with dead animals?”

“Fine, as long as I don’t see them killed,” Siri replies. “And I don’t need her yelled at. She--what sort of bird do you think I would be?”

“What bird you are,” Head Vulture corrects, sets to work. “You’re here, and Little Bird thought you’d fit in here, and you haven’t shown any signs of running away yet.” She lops one leg off the rabbit, fur and all, and sets it aside. “That makes it an ‘are.’ And you, hm.” She turns around, leans against the table, squints at Siri, sizing her up. Siri squares her shoulders and tries to stand a little taller, even as something in the back of her head screams at her to shrink down under someone else’s evaluating gaze. “How do you feel about the moon?”

“I don’t have any real feelings about the moon. It’s pretty, I suppose, and the nights where it’s out are brighter than the nights where it’s not.” She shrugs.

“Not an Owl then, straight away. Every Owl I’ve ever met had an opinion on the moon.”

Siri snorts, laughs.

“Any parents, siblings, Anja? Other friends? Anyone else make it out of your town?”

“Maybe a dozen of us, but no one else I knew. Swan asked the same question.”

“Probably at least a little Vulture in you, then. You made it this long, after all.”

“Swan said the same.”

“She’s old enough and been here long enough she’s got a good idea of what bird anyone’ll be. Been around a little longer’n me, but not by much. Here.” Head Vulture holds out a chunk of rabbit--most of one side, front leg still attached, fur still on--to Siri. Siri takes it. “Give this to some bird that eats meat that’s not any of Little Bird’s. They get the legs.”

“I--alright.” Siri heads off, back to the aisle, half-rabbit held at arm’s length. There’s a hawk, just back down the aisle, and it watches her as she approaches with the rabbit.

There’s a flap in the door, and she lifts the flap and tosses the chunk of meat into the cubicle. the hawk hops off its perch and lands on the meat, begins to tear into it. Siri looks away. 

“How are you at cooking?” Head vulture calls.

“I can avoid burning things, but it’s certainly not a calling.”

“Technology? Pre-war shit?”

“Only as much as I need. No reason to cling to the past, anymore. It’s been too long.” She stands in the doorway of Head Vulture’s cubicle again.

“And what about hunting?”

“I don’t like guns, or killing. I just, after--” She chokes on the thought.

“After them, yeah.” She grunts. “You ever been in charge?” Head Vulture takes the leg off the other half-rabbit, and hands Siri the two legs. 

“You’re going to tell me I’m a Raven, aren’t you?” Siri asks, with a sigh.

“Was thinking about it,” Head Vulture agrees. “Take those legs to the ravens, I'll feed the owls. That vulture will get its own rabbit, all to itself.”

“Sure. Swan told me I’d maybe be a Raven-Vulture.”

“Could be. Not an uncommon pair. You gotta pick one to be your first name, though. Up to you. That’s just our two caps.” Head Vulture shrugs and jabs a knife between two ribs of the rabbit. She chops the half into halves itself, takes one in each hand, and maneuvers around Siri and into the aisle, back toward the owls.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do. You feed those ravens, and then I’ll feed that vulture, and then I’ll introduce you to _my_ vulture.”

They move past each other, and Siri tosses the legs into the ravens’ enclosure through the little flap door. The two ravens fight over them until they realize there are two, and then they each take one and retreat to their own corners. Siri watches them until Head Vulture comes and stands next to her, rabbit in one hand. Head Vulture pushes it through the food flap on Lucinda’s vulture’s door, and the vulture prods at it for a moment before tearing into it with an awful wet sound. Siri looks away.

“Now, my vulture, she’s not as nice as this sweet little baby here. Made it more than a decade without me, out there in the wasteland.” Head Vulture leads the way, down the end of the aisle, and around a corner, toward a bigger enclosure, oen the size of four cubicles. There’s a vulture perched at the top of the cage, head faded orange and wrinkly, ruff thick and fluffy, body a deep, solid black. “She’s a hardy old cuss and I love her.”

Head Vulture steps into the enclosure, and the vulture hops down to the platform at shoulder height. Siri stands in the doorway as Head Vulture combs her fingers through the vulture’s ruff. After a moment she turns so her shoulder is to the vulture, and clicks her tongue twice. The vulture hops on, and Head Vulture strolls out of the enclosure, back toward the stairs. Siri follows after her.

“You know I’ve had this vulture since I joined the tribe? She’s forty-three years old. Raised a lot of other vultures in that time. Seen a lot of shit in that time too.” Head Vulture starts down the stairs, and the vulture on her shoulder adjusts as she slowly makes her way down. “They're good, long-lived birds. The smaller ones don’t live near as long. You only wanna raise one bird for the rest of your life? Get one of these.”

“I’ll think about it,” Siri laughs. “I do worry about bacterial contamination.”

“Just wash your hands--that’s the right treatment, right? Heard a lot more about bad humors and broken circuits and evil spirits than all that pre-war shit.”

“Washing hands does usually work, yes,” Siri agrees. She continues to follow Head Vulture toward the front door, follows her out just in time to see the vulture hop from her shoulder, scrape in the dirt for a moment, and then takes off, flaps her way above the building, begins to circle.

“So you’d be fine,” Head Vulture says, and shrugs. She leans on her good leg and puts her hands in her pockets, as she watches her vulture circle. She grins, bigger and bigger, as her vulture circles wider and wider. “Just gotta wash your hands.”

Siri says nothing, just tips her head back and watches the vulture soar.


	10. Chapter 10

There’s a commotion of men’s voices, and Siri pokes her head out of the bedroom where she’s reading.

Lucinda stands in the doorway, haggard, clearly awake for too long, but she’s upright.

“I’m back,” she says, wobbles a little, grips the doorframe tighter. Siri grabs the roll she had taken as a snack for later, the gallon jug she still keeps habitually filled with clean water, and rushes toward Lucinda. She presses both into Lucinda’s hands, and Lucinda slowly sinks to the floor. Siri squats in front of her.

“When’s the last time you drank?” she asks.

“Drank some datura tea the morning I left,” Lucinda replies, and chugs water from the jug.

“And the last time you ate?”

“Night we got here.” Lucinda pauses to take a bite of the roll.

“How many times have we had this discussion?” Siri sighs.

“Four or five, I think,” Lucinda laughs.

There are footsteps behind Siri, and she doesn’t turn to look at them.

“Datura, right?” she murmurs. “Tip your chin up, open your eyes, look at me. How’s your vision?” 

“Everything is still a little blurry.”

“That’ll be because your eyes are dilated. How’s your pulse, give me your arm.” Siri reaches for Lucinda’s wrist, and Lucinda sets the water down, holds out her arm so Siri can count her pulse. There’s a long pause, and Siri sighs. “Your pulse is fine. A little fast, but since you smoke, that’s likely anyway.” Siri sits back on her heels. “I personally wouldn’t recommend doing much for at least the next day, since I don’t know how long datura will last in your system.”

“I’m not seeing things anymore, at least.” Lucinda murmurs, sags forward a little. “Can I hug you?”

“Yeah,” Siri agrees, leans forward enough to wrap her arms around Lucinda. Lucinda clutches at her, tight, buries her face in Siri’s shoulder. 

“Thank you,” Lucinda says. She takes a deep breath. “For coming with me this far. I know what comes next and you can stay here.” Lucinda sets down the roll, holds Siri tighter. Siri sighs, rocks a little. “I’m going to kill every one of Caesar’s toadies and then I’m going to rip his heart out and tour his corpse around everywhere my feet can take me.”

“Good,” Siri murmurs. “Find a camera and take a picture for me.”

Lucinda laughs.

“I’ll try.” She lets go of Siri, sits back again, and Siri lets go too, sighs. 

“Really though, please rest for the next couple days.”

“I will. I promise. Scout’s honor.” Lucinda grins, squints. “But it looks like we’ve got company.”

Siri stays sitting, but rolls over to sit. Lucinda picks the roll up off the floor and takes a bite, and Siri shoots her a look. Lucinda winks and takes another bite.

The entire tribe stands in the hallway, some of them i the doorways, but most arranged along the walls. They stand, silent, and they all look at Lucinda.

“So this is when we vote,” Head Vulture says, voice deep and rough. “We vote on the Shrike and if she rejoins the tribe. Who raises an objection?”

“I raise an objection,” Swan says. She steps away from the wall, looks between Head Vulture and Lucinda. “This tribe is already dying one by one from broken legs and cancer and wet lung, we don’t need to rot it from the inside out at the same time. Keep her out, and keep the rest of us safe.”

“Objection noted,” Head Vulture murmurs.

“I hold with that,” Finch agrees.

“‘Shrike’ isn’t a name you get for saying something mean about someone once,” Sparrow offers, voice small. “If Owl-Eagle had cause to rename her--which Siri says she did--then whatever she did must have qualified her for the name.”

“I think the same,” someone from the back pipes up. A handful of other voices follow in agreement. “We’ve lasted this long without her, and if we let her in, since we don’t know what she did, she might do it to us. And how quickly until we start letting small things slide just to keep the peace, and then we’ve rotted from the inside out.”

“Let her speak for herself,” Cardinal interjects. “If she’s done this much and she’s at our doorstep asking to be let back in, you gotta think she’s learned _something_.”

“I’ll hold with that,” Regina murmurs, and a ripple of agreement goes through the others too.

“So,” Head Vulture looks at Lucinda, face blank. “How did you earn the name ‘Shrike’?”

Lucinda closes her eyes, takes a breath. She picks up the jug of water and takes a sip before setting it down again, as the silence stretches longer. Siri picks at a shred of rubber peeling off the side of her sandal, doesn’t look up.

“I went beyond survival and blending in when I worked for and with Caesar’s Legion. I worked in their interests, and harmed people who had done me no harm and offered no resistance. I--” She pauses, and she breathes in, soft, wobbly, then continues. “I was cruel, and violent, and hurt people because it gave me power.” She pauses again, looks down at her water bottle, then closes her eyes and faces the tribe again. “I killed beyond what my orders were. I--” she halts, swallows hard.

“Ravenkiller,” Poorwill says, quietly. “Little Bird, Little Raven, Lucy, Shrike--Ravenkiller.”

“Ravenkiller,” Lucinda says, soft. She opens her eyes, searches for Poorwill, can't find her past all the other watching faces.

“Ravenkiller, huh,” Regina says. “So you’re really the last of what we had.”

“I am. I don’t submit it as a reason to be allowed back, but I am,” Lucinda agrees, turning to Regina.

“Well, you can say what you’ve done wrong, at least,” Head Vulture says. “And what’s your plan going forward?”

“Kill Caesar,” Lucinda replies, immediately. Her eyes harden, and she scowls. “Kill him and everyone who worships him. I’ve done shit, I’ve done shit I can’t make amends for, and I know that, and I know I can’t give people a five year old’s apology and hope for things to be better.” SHe pauses, looks around at the other women, meets the eyes of a half dozen of them, one after the other. “But I can kill Caesar. I can kill everyone who worships him, anyone who might rise to power behind him, I can kill them.” She bares her teeth. “They’re just men.”

“You gonna do this even if we tell you to get the hell out of here?” Head Vulture asks. She leans on her cane.

“I am,” Lucinda says.

“You got anything else to say?” Head Vulture asks.

“I left the Legion. It took me too long to do it, but I did leave. I left them, and when I kill Caesar, I’m going to get as many of us as are left out and back home.”

“Which ‘us’?” Head Vulture asks.

“Women, slaves,” Lucinda replies. “Whoever is willing to run when given the chance.”

“Sound like our sort,” Head Vulture agrees. “And my vote says we take her back.”

“Take her back, but she’s not a Raven,” Regina says, narrows her eyes, studies Lucinda. “Ravenkiller.”

“Ravenshrike,” Poorwill offers. “Name her Ravenshrike. You don’t shed a name like that so easy.”

“That’s what I called myself when I killed the man who tried to kill me,” Lucinda says. “I’ll wear it, if you give it.”

“Rejoin, rename,” Poorwill says.

“Rejoin, rename,” Head Vulture agrees, and Regina echoes it, and a few others after. “Does anyone else have anything to say?” Head Vulture asks. No one says anything, or does any more than shift in place. “Then I call the vote. If you’re voting rejoin, rename, stand there,” she points toward the kitchen, “and if you're voting that she gets no name and gets no hospitality, stand there.” She points to the other side of the hallway. She steps to the kitchen side herself, followed by Cardinal, Poorwill, Regina, and eight of the other women. Swan, Finch, Sparrow, and five of the women step to the other side of the hallway. Three women stay standing in the middle of the hallway.

“We abstain from voting,” one of them says, and shrugs. Head Vulture nods, looks to Siri.

“You can vote, if you want. You’re tribe now, if you wanna be. That entitles you to a vote.”

“I’ll abstain too,” Siri says, quiet. She finishes peeling the piece of rubber off her sandal.

“Then I guess this is how the vote sorts out.” Head Vulture nods. “Ravenshrike, welcome back to the tribe. Now go lay down like Siri said you should. You look like absolute shit.”

“Love you too,” Lucinda laughs, and sags. “Thank you.”

“No thanks yet, Little Bird,” Head Vulture replies. “This ain’t probationary but if you think you get to settle in and marry a girl and live happily ever after and no one is gonna stand up here and call you Ravenkiller ever again, you forgot how this tribe works. But really, come on. Datura fucked you over good.”

Lucinda ducks her head and laughs, and Siri leans over to help her back to her feet. The other women disperse back to wherever they were--a few to the dining room, a few back downstairs. Head Vulture heads toward the guest room, and Siri and Lucinda follow her in.

***

It’s long past dark, and Lucinda is quiet, though she’s awake. She’s on her bed, hands behind her head, legs stretched out, eyes closed. One raven sits on her chest, the other perches at the head of her bed. The vulture was left in its enclosure for the night, though it had been let out to hop along behind Lucinda for most of the day.

Siri lays on her bed, too, Hands folded over her stomach, studying the ceiling.

“When you kill Caesar, try to get Melody here,” Siri says. “She deserves better than to grow up surrounded by all of them.”

“I’ll do my best,” Lucinda agrees.

“I still think you’re one of the best things that happened to me,” Siri says, quieter. “I still have a hard time making everything fit in a way that’s comfortable to think about but.” She pauses. “If you come back, we can talk again then.”

“I’ll come back,” Lucinda says, also soft. “I promise.” Then a little louder. “I couldn’t leave you here with all these prying old ladies alone, could I? Need someone else to help take the load off.”

Siri snorts.

“I like Head Vulture. I’m glad I got to meet someone from your clan.”

“I wish you could have met more of them,” Lucinda says. “I think you would’ve liked my mom.”

“I wish you could’ve met mine, too. She would have wanted to feed you immediately.”

“I do appreciate dinner,” Lucinda laughs. The room goes quiet, then, and they lay in companionable silence.

One of the ravens hops down to the floor with a soft _click_ and the flutter of wings.

“Hey Siri?” Lucinda murmurs, sleep in her voice.

“Mmm?” Siri replies.

“Thanks for putting up with me.”

“Yeah,” Siri murmurs. “Yeah.”

They fall into silence again, and soon Siri starts to snore.

***

“Little Bird, Little Bird, look at me.” Adopted Magpie crouches in front of Little Bird, who has tears running down her cheeks, her entire face crumpled. She holds Little Bird’s arms. “What happened?”

On the other side of camp, Fledgling is wailing, loud and desperate, as Head Eagle tries to calm her down.

“Fledgling _hit me_!” Little Bird near-yells, furious. “So I hit her back!”

“Why did Fledgling hit you?” Adopted Magpie asks. 

“Because she’s _mean_ ,” Little Bird replies, pulls away, crosses her arms, sticks her bottom lip out. “She wouldn’t share her dolls.”

“Did you ask to play with them with her?” Adopted Magpie asks, voice low and even.

“Yes,” Little Bird replies, clearly offended.

“And what did she say?”

“She told me no, they’re hers.” Little Bird pouts harder at this, wipes tears away.

“And then she hit you?”

“I told her she _had_ to share because that was the _nice_ thing to do and _then_ she hit me.” Her lip wobbles and she starts crying again. 

“Alright. I need you to calm down. I’m gonna go talk to Head Eagle and Fledgling.” Adopted Magpie looks up, catches Head Vulture’s eye, waves her over. “Head Vulture is gonna sit here with you until I get back.”

“Alright,” Little Bird agrees, starting to perk up at Head Vulture’s name.

“Mmkay. I’ll be back in just a bit.” Adopted Magpie pats Little Bird’s shoulder, steps around her, and Head Vulture settles down next to Little Bird. Little Bird plops down, wipes away tears.

“Hey Little Bird?” Head Vulture says, turns to face Little Bird.

“Yeah?” Little Bird asks.

“You’re gonna have to fix her toys.” Head Vulture raises her eyebrows.

“But she was mean to me!” Little Bird immediately insists. “If she just _shared_ i wouldn’t have broken them.”

“That ain’t how this works, kiddo,” Head Vulture says, low and soft. She leans in, keeps her face calm. “You broke ‘em.”

“Yeah, but she was mean to me first. I didn’t start it.”

“You gotta listen to me lecture you about breaking other people’s shit, again?” Head Vulture asks. “‘Cause I know you’ve heard that one before.”

“She started it,” Little Bird insists, crosses her arms, pouts.

“This the hill you’re gonna die on?” Head Vulture asks, light, nonplussed.

Little Bird scowls.

“You go apologize to Fledgling, like you mean it, tell her you're real sorry you broke her dolls, and that you hit her, and don’t say anything about her hitting you.”

“But she _did_ ,” Little Bird whines.

“An apology ain’t about you, Little Bird,” Head Vulture sighs. “You tell ‘em you’re sorry for the thing you did, that you ain’t gonna do it again, and you mean it, and then you fix what you broke.”

“I don’t wanna.” Little Bird sits up straight, inclines her chin, crosses her arms.

“You ain't gonna win anything by being stubborn.” Head Vulture bends her knees, rests her forearms on them. “Ain’t a prize at the end of the day for whoever fucks up worst without saying sorry.”

“She hit me first,” Little Bird insists. “ _She_ should tell _me_ sorry.”

“Ain’t how it works, we did this already.” Head Vulture sighs, drops her knees. “People like you more when you tell ‘em you’re sorry, and then do what you can to fix it. I know a lot of us old folks’d be proud of you for doing it.”

Little Bird makes a noise in her throat, keeps her arms crossed as she studies the ground.

“I’ll even help you fix the dolls, alright? Here comes your mama, you know what she’s gonna have you do. You go with her and say you’re sorry, and then you come find me, and we’ll fix things together, alright?” Head Vulture holds out one hand, and Little Bird takes it after a moment. They shake.

“I’ll go say sorry, and then we fix stuff,” Little Bird says.

“You got it, Little Bird,” Head Vulture agrees, and grins big as Adopted Magpie come back, impending sigh evident on her face. “You’n’me are gonna fix stuff.”


End file.
